Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind

By Loung Ung

Book Overview

When Loung Ung came to America in 1980 as a ten-year-old Cambodian refugee, she had already survived years of hunger, violence, and loss at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, a story she told in her critically acclaimed bestseller, First They Killed My Father. Now, in Lucky Child, Ung writes of assimilation and, in alternating chapters, gives voice to a genocide survivor she left behind in rural Cambodia, her older sister Chou. Loung was the lucky child, the sibling Eldest Brother chose to take with him to America. The youngest and the scrappiest, she was the one he believed had the best chance of making it. Just two years apart, Chou and Loung had bonded deeply over the deaths of their parents and sisters. As they stood holding hands in their dusty village while the extended family gathered to say good-bye, they never imagined that fifteen years would pass before they would be reunited again. With candor and enormous flair, Ung describes what it is like to survive in a new culture while surmounting dogged memories of genocide and the deep scars of war. Not only must she learn about Disney characters and Christmas trees to fit in with her classmates, she must also come to understand life in a nation of peace: that the Fourth of July fireworks are not bombs and that she doesn't have to hide food in her bed every night to make sure she has enough to eat. Her spunk, intelligence, and charisma win out, but Cambodia and Chou are always in her thoughts. An accomplished activist and writer, Ung has now returned to Cambodia many times, and in this re-creation of Chou's life, she writes the story that so easily could have been hers. Both redemptive and searing, Lucky Child highlights the harsh realities of chance and circumstance and celebrates the indomitability of the human spirit.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060733942
• ISBN13: 9780060733940
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.9" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Lucky Child

What a great book and sequel to First They Killed My Father. As a sister to three young children adopted from Cambodia, this book gave great insight as to what their birth families went through under Pol Pot and why they would have given these children up for adoption. This book helps the reader understand that even after the refugees found their way out of Cambodia and the citizens remaining found a new life, the horrors of this war were still with them. A very touching book.

Not So Perfect : Loung Ung and Us

As I read 'Lucky Girl,' I was amazed that Loung Ung had the courage to write such an honest account of her feelings and experiences following her arrival in the USA. She paints a portrait of herself with shadings of the human faults and frailties that we all carry within us. But would we have the courage to pen the less admirable aspects of ourselves for all the world to know? Several years ago I traveled to Phnom Penh. Reading Ms Ung's first book after the visit, I was haunted with vivid pictures of the Ung's family living such a comfortable life in the city and then being plunged into the darkness of genocide. I recalled thinking that the streets I wandered, the movie theater, the markets were places that, in my mind, had strangely witnessed the Ung's family pleasures and then the insanity of the Khmer brutality. In 'Lucky Child' Loung Ung reminds us that although we might consider this unspeakable chapter of human history as 'over,' her family and thousands of other rural Cambodians live with the fear of landmines and the reality of vestiges of the Khmer threat every day. Should you want to learn about these courageous people in the context of someone to be admired for amazing candor, read 'Lucky Child.'

Lucky Child

I enjoyed this book very much. I heard an interview with the author on our local NPR radio station and bought the book the next day. The discriptions of her feelings and the contrasts between her life in Vermont and her sisters in Cambodia were moving and very artfully done. This is a must read for all of us who sometimes take for granite the freedoms we enjoy and a true picture of courage and faith.

Maybe to soon for me to review

I just finished "First They Killed My Father" the day before, and walked down to the bookstore and scoured around the shelves to pick this book up. Then read it all in one sitting through the night. If you've read her first book, you really should read this, so you can see how things work out for the Ung family. Although, a great read on its own, I think it best if people read both books and in chronological order. Not sure what about this particular story of this one girl and her family managed to pull my heart out of my chest over and over. I found myself in tears almost every page. The thoughts that there are millions of stories like this one that came out of Cambodia, gives to ideas that the whole world should be getting together to grieve over this tragedy and helping socially to heal the wounds caused to Cambodia by this war.

Engaging and gripping tale of immigrant experience

Ms. Ung has once again given us a powerful rendering of what it means to survive. Her first book, First They Killed My Father" was extraordinary for its ability to translate the experience of the Cambodian genocide for a public disconnected to the realities of that war. Her second book is no less a tour de force, giving us an eye into the life of a young girl from a radically different culture (and history of deprevation) trying to come to terms with this American life. She does it remarkably well, with candor and grace.