First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

by Loung Ung

Book Overview

"A riveting memoir. . . an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore." -- San Francisco Chronicle

From a childhood survivor of the Cambodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060856262
• ISBN13: 9780060856267
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

meaningful and insightful

this has to be one of my favorite books. i felt the emotions brought on by this book deeply, and i am very moved by it. it makes me contemplate my life, and it inspires me to want to do more. honestly, this book made me hate people and love them at the same time.

Emotional but gripping tale

This is an absolute must read. I had a hard time getting through this only because it was so emotionally draining. It is hard to imagine that this is a non-fiction book. A great book all around. Easy to follow prose.

The Human Dimension of the Khmer Rouge Genocide

Loung Ung's book FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER is an intimate, personal account of life under Cambodia's genocidal Khmer Rouge. Its emotion and urgency give the reader a sense of what it was like to be there -- to suffer as Ung and her family suffered and to see the horrors that they saw. The book thus provides a crucial supplement to drier, more academic accounts of the Khmer Rouge regime, which typically are written at a distance in order to preserve an aura of objectivity. Ung is not in the business of providing a dry, historical account of what happened to her country; rather, her purpose is to share the raw, often brutal, story of what happened to her.Ung's book provides a human framework for coming to terms with the madness of the Khmer Rouge. Instead of remaining decontextualized victims -- remarkable only for their suffering and identical to the victims of countless other tragedies -- Ung's family and the people she meets gain the dignity of personal qualities and individuality. Through the eyes of the child that she was at the time, Ung forces us to see her family and acquaintances not just as statistics or haunted faces glimpsed on television, but as people with lives that began before the tragic period of the book and that, at least in a few cases, continued after the events described in the book were over.FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER is part confession, part therapy and part urgent mission to share a story with the world. It is often painful to read but it is profoundly rewarding. Ung's story is heartbreaking but her own persistence, fortitude, and ultimate triumph inspire. Furthermore, in an age where tragedy and genocide have seemingly become commonplace, Ung's ability to heal after such a harrowing childhood is encouraging evidence that others, recovering from tragedies elsewhere, can do the same.

First They Killed My Father

Luong Ung's story held my attention completely. I have many friends who survived the killing fields of Pol Pot and their stories match hers in many ways. Seeing the author interviewed on television recently caused me to seek out this book. I was particularly focused on certain points of her story: how wedges of class envy and racial differences were driven between people to help fuel the killing, how the children endured forced political indoctrination, the detailed, vivid description of starvation from a child's point of view, and the spirit to survive often being fueled by hate. Loung used her hate for Pol Pot and what had been done to her family as a source of strength to survive, but the hate she developed never extinguished her love for her family. As Americans, do we really think we are immune from having a killing field happen here in America? We need to read this story and learn from it. Human history is filled with holocausts and will continue to be filled with holocausts because that is as much part of human nature as it is human nature to forget the lessons offered to us by these survivors. Loung Ung presented the crucible of human frailties for us to examine and for her to find a way to heal herself of some of the pain of her losses. I am indebted to her for her courage and care to share this with me.

A gripping account of hell on earth

This is a book that should awaken Americans to the hell that Cambodians endured between 1975 and 1979. The author tells her tale of misery caused by the murderous and inhuman Khmer Rouge and their bizarre leader Saloth Sar (Pol Pot). The author remembers the ordeal of her family and citizens of Phnom Penh being forcibly evicted into the hinterlands of Cambodia where many died of starvation, exhaustion and execution while working in labor camps to create the "agrarian utopia" devoid of technology, money and educated people. The author tells of the tragedy of being separated from her family at such a young age and later learning that her mother and father as well as two sisters died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The book is powerful by reminding the world that genocide on a mass scale is not an isolated European phenomenon. It happened in Cambodia, yet the world and the media seem to forget this sordid episode in the history of the world. This is a story of survival against long odds. How anyone could survive an ordeal that the author describes in this book is beyond me. When I think I might be having a bad day, I need to simply remember that many people in the world have it a lot tougher than many of us do. Indeed, the fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia in April 1975 is not exactly a shining moment in U.S. history. Our cowardice in leaving the Cambodians and South Vietnamese to their own fates after propping them up and encouraging active resistance against the oommunist forces has to rank as one of the sadder days in our history. Having recently visited Cambodia, I have seen some of the killing fields and talked to many who have had their families destroyed during the period of 1975-1979. Almost every Cambodian family has been affected by that period. The author is to be lauded for writing a great book. It is an angaging read and can be read in one or two days. The book is riveting and makes one sad to think that this sort of thing happens in our world. The tragedy of the killing fields must be made known to the world and this book achieves that task. There are lessons to be learned so that this human tragedy can't happen again

An Incredible Narrative of Tragedy, Courage, and Survival.

Having traveled extensively in Asia and keenly recalling the tragedy of Cambodia from media accounts and as depicted in the movie "The Killing Fields," I was attracted immediately to this subject matter. However, even then I was unprepared for the enormous impact this book would have on me.Anyone with respect for human dignity will surely be affected by this insider chonicle of the unspeakable atrocities committed against average, ordinary, and innocent Cambodian families and individuals. And yet, despite the enormity of the physical and psychological terrors, in the end, the triumph of a child and her siblings bravery, perseverance, and spirit leads to a story of ultimate survival and confirmation of light over darkness.This is an important book, not only in detailing the author's incredible individual ordeal, but also reminding us of the terrible consequences of a fanatical totalitarian fringe gaining power in any society.And finally this is a tough story, but also one to celebrate and learn from. It should be recommended reading in Universities around the world in the hope that the architects of tomorrow's societies be well aware of the dangers of fanatical extremism.