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Summary: You Don't Know How Good You Have It Until You Read This One.
Review: I think someone recommended this book to be about six months ago while I was visiting Colorado Springs. I was quite moved by this story from the eyes of a child amid such horror in the Cambodian-stricken country enduring war, havoc, and famine. While it is a sad story about family...in the end...it's such a relief to know that Loung Ung, the author, was finally saved by an American sponsor to come to the USA-Vermont. And what a beautiful place Vermont is...from one culture shock to another. Great book! It's a reminder to us all...that the basics in life are what really matter: food, shelter, clothing, love!
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Summary: First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia....
Review: I am planning a trip to Cambodia and I wanted to read a book that would give me some insight and backround on the country and the history of Cambodia. Ms. Ung's book was far more than a factual account of a disturbing history. Her story is a story of human strength that goes beyond anything that most of us can even imagine. I don't know how her and her family survived and now thrives after the turmoil that entered their lives in 1975. I think what is so sad is that even with recounts of these atrocities from the not so distant past we still see so much suffering in this world. I think the most touching part of the book is when Loung was being ridiculed by her "step-mother" as being worthless and no good and how she remembered her father and vowed that she could survive because she had everything that he had given her. What a powerful tribute to her love for him and his love for their family even though their time together was so unfairly cut short. God bless them all.
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Summary: First They Killed My Father
Review: Book Review "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter Of Cambodia Remembers" by Ms. Loung Ung. January 2000. HarperCollins Publishers, 256 pages. Reviewed by Ronnie Yimsut Special to the Asian Reporter Do you remember when you were just a child? What kind a childhood did you have? Do you still remember what kind of dream you have? What was it like for you when you were growing up? These are some of the questions one should ponder before he or she is about to read a recently published book by Ms. Loung Ung. For Loung, a genocide survivor, her answer to these questions might have been simply as, "I never really have a childhood, with the exception of the brief happy moment I have with my family." Loung's childhood, like that of many other children in Cambodia-including this reviewer, was taken away completely by war and the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields regime. Only loneliness, suffering, extreme hunger (starvation), and sadness seemed to accompany Loung's early childhood in Cambodia. Forced to live and work as slave labors in a virtual "prison without a wall," Loung and her family endured every basic human rights abuse by a genocidal regime, following a long and agonizing forced march across Cambodia. Overworked, sickness, and starvation soon followed as her constant companions. One by one, her family members were dying. Her family unity was slowly and agonizingly breaking up piece-by-piece by the so called, "Angkar," the Khmer Rouge secretive or phantom organization. An older sister was the first to die of illness, as a direct result of overwork and starvation, in a primitive Communist hospital. Her father, a former government official, was the first to be taken away and subsequently executed. Her mother and the youngest sister survived long enough to endure more torture before the Khmer Rouge young and eager executioners also killed them. No one immune from the mass killing by the Khmer Rouge, including some of the loyal Khmer Rouge cadres and soldiers themselves. Orphaned by age eight years old, young Loung managed to overcome the Khmer Rouge brain washing sessions and training to be a child soldier. They trained her to be just another obedient killer for Angkar, like so many others before her. But they failed miserably. She survived only by her wit and her own family members' love for one another, and the numerous sacrifices that were made. It was the formula needed to fence against a genocidal regime bent on destroying family unity and a civil society. Loung refused to give up. In the end, Loung strong will have triumphant against all odds. Loung's memoir represents the story of countless other children in Cambodia who did not survive to tell of their fate, of their immense suffering before their untimely death. In telling her own story, Loung is in fact telling many other untold stories of the suffering and death of her fellow children in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge reign of terrors. She is the voice for many others who are no longer have a voice. As Loung often said, "By telling my own story of suffering to others who would listen, I am worthy of being alive." Thank you for your courage and determination, Loung!
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Summary: This Book Makes It Real
Review: This is an excellent book of Ung's experiences in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, where she lived. The story is told by Loung Ung as an child, although filtered through an adult's eyes. The events occured when she was between 5 and 9 years old, but she tells it as though it is occuring during the present. This is a common literary device, but the fact remains that there is no way a child could accurately report the things that she saw to the extent that Ung does. Still, the book does bring home what the statistics about Pol Pot's reign can never do -- it shows the suffering caused on an individual level and the sufferings of someone who had no reason to be victimised. The book makes very painful reading as it brings one into the lives of one family that was basically destroyed by the madness of the Khmer Rouge. I would recommend this book to anyone if I thought that it would stop such atrocities from happening in the future, but then again, that is really not the way humans behave. A very sad commentary on the human race. Still, what is surprising is the ability not only of the author to survive emotionally but to actually thrive and to use her own experiences as an argument to get rid of mine warfare in the world. When we see the pictures of her family, we are left to wonder what might have been of 1/4 of Camboddia best and brightest had been allowed the right to life.
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Summary: Misconceptions
Review: As much as this book tries to portray what happened in tragic Cambodia between overthrown monarch Prince Sihanouk and Khmer Rouge regime, there were many untrue facts regarding to Cambodian culture and traditions. In fact, majority of contents in this book were not written in Cambodian point of view, but more of western point of view. For example, the definition of "middle class" in her book seems as if they were more affluent than "middle class" Japanese, which was considered as major economic power during the 70's. If Cambodia was more prosperous than Japan during that time, how would Khmer Rouge emmerge in the first place? The Khmer Rouge, as in many representative of lower class or proletarians including Bolsheviks and Maoist (CPP). Majority of Cambodians were living in near poverty period during the Siahnouk's regime. If Cambodians were living as if they were like Ung's family, Khmer Rouge wouldn't exist at all. Overall, misrepresantation of Cambodian culture and society as well as political climate were quite evident in this book that Ung has failed to tell actual autobiography of herself, instead resorting to gaining sympathy among western nation with her fanastic fiction.
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Summary: A Blessing from Cambodia
Review: Being exposed to Cambodia and her people for the past 15 years, having children that are 1/2 Cambodian, and knowing Loung and her family personally make this story very poignant to me. I've listened to many Cambodians tell thier stories of the Khmer Rouge and how it effected them, but Loung's book brought a special clarity and context to these stories by providing a detailed account of the life that the Ung family experienced during the reign of Pol Pot and his regime. It should be understood that Meng and Khou, Loung's older brothers, assisted in compiling the sequence of events that occured to the family when they were forced to leave Phnom Penh (some readers have mentioned that it's hard to believe that a five year old could recall events in such detail.) I've spoken to many people about Cambodia and receive a variety of responses. Many have scarcely heard of it, others are aware of the atrocities committed during the Khmer Rouge, but everyone can learn something about Cambodia and themselves if their heart and mind is open while reading this book. Millions more Cambodians were effected just like Loung and her family, and similar stories are living within their hearts right now. The story itself is riveting and I quickly found myself alongside Loung as she shared the journey of her childhood. I recall wanting to feed her as she starved, wanting to help her parents and siblings as they were mistreated, and wanting to assist Loung as she fought to survive the hell that twisted and turned around her. But we are also called to share in the love Loung has for her family and the triumphs they experience. In short -- Loung, her family, and this book have been a blessing that have forever changed my life. Thank you all...
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Summary: A lesson in remembering
Review: Children remember events more as emotional snapshots than pieces of information woven together in a tale. Loung Ung's voice in this book is the authentic voice of a child that for years had been trapped behind walls of rage. She returns to the past by pealing away layers of burned out skin to reveal the fresh, pink flesh of the wound she received as a child. In doing so, she teaches the rest of us, the wounded children of wars and revolutions, how to bravely expose our wounds and allow them to heal, once and for all. This book is a saga of reconciliation. An important lesson on remembering, feeling and empowering the self to forgive. Thank you Loung...thank you for remembering!
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Summary: Captivating recount of horror
Review: Luong Ung has sucessfully recounted in her poignant novel the horrors of growing up under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The novel puts into words the complex emotions of a child as her family is separated, starved, and for a few memebers of the family, killed. I had the honor of meeting Ms. Ung as she spoke to my University of Maryland-College Park Scholars (International Studies) class. We were all moved by her willingness to move on after such a calamity. Anybody with any interests in the horror of genocide and the best and worst of humanity should read this book. The book was so captivating that I was actually upset when I finished it.
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Summary: Excellent and Moving
Review: The author of this book has expressed terrifying emotions and experiences in an emotionally charged book. This book shows the effects of genocide and terror through the eyes of a little girl surrounded by daily events of murder and death, disease and death, torture and death, and starvation and death. This is an important book, because it brings to light events which occurred during the turbulent Vietnam era. This book does for the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot what "Night" did for the WWII Jewish Holocaust... it puts a human face and name to only one of many terrifying stories that humanity needs to come to terms with.
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Summary: A horrendous childhood leading to becoming a world leader.
Review: A heart rending narrative of the author's childhood in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime.Her family accustomed to a privileged existence was disrupted in l975 and they lived in hiding moving from village to village in a hand to mouth existence while sufferinig horrible life threatening treatment under the regime. Her father was killed.In l980, the author now a young adolescent was rescued from a displacement camp by an Essex Junction Vermont church group..She attended high school and college in the United States. She shares with readers heart rending descriptions of the horrors of her life in Cambodia and her joys in finding a home in Vermont. Her Buddist background despite the tragic experiences in her chldhood and the warmth and support of the Vermonters provides her with strengrh to survive and devote her life to working for a better world. Currently she is a staff member of the Campaign for a Landmine Free World based in Wshington D.C. I have rarely read a book which so strongly held my attention from beginning to end.
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