Customer Reviews

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (P.S.)

5 star:		(123)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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.

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.

I've had a low-level interest in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge since I saw "The Killing Fields" a few years ago. I've read a few things and was basically familiar with the history. However, I had no real appreciation for the brutality the Cambodian people endured for those 4 years until I read this book.

As somebody stated in an earlier review, I wondered (at first) how a 5 year old child could remember all of this. As I got further into the story, it occurred to me that no one could ever forget this sort of thing. In addition, Ung gives one of her older brothers credit for filling in some gaps. This book is VERY believable.

Ung writes about horrific events in a matter-of-fact style. She occaisionaly changes the point of view of the narration, which can be a bit confusing. But, overall, it's easy to follow the story. It's even easier to become drawn in to the story.

I put another book aside to read this. I'm glad I did.

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.

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

I often imagine what would happen if society suffered a meltdown around me. Could I survive? What would happened to my loved ones? Could I protect them? Would I fight back?

Loung endured and survived such a meltdown. She walks the reader through her voyage into and out of the abyss. I had no choice but to read the entire book in one night - it's that powerful.

Both a human tragedy and a truimph of the spirit. I am grateful that Loung was strong enough to survive and tell her tale. I am better for it.

From 1988 to 1990 I was living and working in Cambodia with OXFAM UK. It was almost daily that I was told, by my Cambodian collegues/friends, accounts of the killings and suffering that took place during the Khmer Rouge time. When I read Loung Ung's book, I felt as though I was back in Cambodia, being told another experience that emotionally tears one's heart apart. I can not comprehend how a child at that age would be able to deal with such brutalities and loss of parents and siblings.

Loung Ung's book describes, through a personal account, an historical period in Cambodia that needs to be remembered and told. I would hope that, through reading of this book, our society would become more aware and compassionate towards others. Loung Ung's book is a must to be read by all.

I could not put it down. Loung's story is unbelievable. While I was reading her story I grew with her. In the beginning, you feel the sadness and pain she is going through. Towards the end the little girl grows out of this sadness and becomes incredibly strong and you as the reader experience this development with her and you stop crying when she does. Loung Ung is an exceptional young woman. I admire her work, accomplishments and her strength.

This is an elegant work of prose that traces the harrowing exodus of a young child from her idyllic home in Phnom Penh to the remote villages in the Cambodian country-side to the Angkar death camps.

As Loung Ung is exiled from her idyllic home, the reader is led down a terrifying path filled with betrayal, jealousy, and murder but also courage, heroism, and survival. Ung writes in a poignant yet succint style that shows how friends turned against one another in order to curry favor with the ruling regime. Families once on the margins of Cambodian society, both physically and economically, turned on their countrymen with a savage vengeance that defies a logical response. This led to unspeakable acts of violence by the ruling regime, either through starvation or slaughter, against countless people.

Yet, amid this awful backdrop, Ung also introduces to the reader people who reclaim their humanity under oppression and, in this sense, redeems this sad story. Of the most memorable is the author's brother, who underwent severe beatings from the children of the camp leader in order to provide his family a handful of food to stave off hunger. Ultimately, this is a story of survival and how the personal saga of one person reveals the depths of the human psyche under such desparate conditions. It reminds this writer of Primo Levi's book, "Survival in Aschuwitz" and how one person's experience can represent the journey of 10,000 more.

If there is one question that does arise from this book that was unanswered, it is this: given all that has happened to Cambodians in their civil war, how does the cycle of hatred and violence end and who is willing to make that change?

Loung has done an awesome job in writing her real life account of the Angkat atrocities in Cambodia.

I was unable to let go of the book once I started reading and lost sleep over a few days just thinking about and imagining what I had read. It brought back images to mind from the movie "The Killing Fields".

I can understand the immense effort and courage it must have taken to recollect incidents from a time that probably still brings shivers to the author's mind.