Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.'

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.

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.

Last year, I picked up First They Killed My Father while I was in Cambodia. I had already read Chanrithy Him's - When Broken Glass Floats. Both of these books are very powerful and must reads in the genre of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979. Lucky Child is a book that takes place in a completely different world. At the end of "First They", we see Loung heading for a new life in America and we all give a sigh of relief.

Lucky Child goes in depth into the difficulties of a minority trying to adapt to white American society. All the while, Loung has everything she experienced in Cambodia continually gnawing at her spirit - the loss of her family being the most difficult for her. As the author, she is our focus, but in Lucky Child, we also get a very good look at her older sister Chou and what life was like in Cambodia in the years following the fall of the Khmer Rouge.

This book is powerful and tough to put down. It tugs at the heartstrings and provokes deeper thought into our own lives and values. Lucky Child is one of the finer books that I have read in some time and I highly reccomend it to anyone who is interested in Cambodia, the peoples, customs and landscapes of that beautiful country, and human nature, suffering, and the will to succeed. This is a book not to be missed!

If you're a human being, you should read this inspiring and moving book. Yes, it will tug at your heartstrings and enliven your empathy, but it will also make it crystal clear how a stridently divisive political and social climate - worse than, but politically not unlike America today - can push people into doing the unthinkable to their neighbors, while leaving others asking, "How could this have happened?" It's all her story, but anyone with a brain...and a heart...can see its connection to his or her own life.

Loung Ung's writing is an elegant and eloquent, yet down-to-earth style that you won't be able to pull away from. In "Lucky Child," she again demonstrates her masterful storytelling ability and delivers a unique, and often heartbreaking, look inside another culture. And our own.

This book will make you think, make you feel, and, hopefully, encourage you to act the next time you hear the words "abuse" or "genocide." Definitely a must-read.

I read Lucky Child before First They Killed My Father. Although I had her first book on my shelf, I needed reasurance that everything would be "ok" in the end. It also prepared me for what I would read in the first book. I'm not recommending that you do so, but I'm a very sensitive person so that is what I did. So let me tell you, I think about both these books on a daily basis. I read books one after another and fairly quick, so it is rare that a book will stay with me for months after I read it. The courage Loung Ung has is astonishing. She is not just someone with a story to tell, but an amazing writer. I highly recommend this book.

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.

Loung Ung's fascinating second book, Lucky Child, picks up the story that began with her first memoir, First They Killed My Father, and with both books I found it impossible to put them down once I'd begun reading. Lucky Child contrasts life for Loung as a refugee in America, with her sister Chou's life in rural Cambodia, and it's a revealing and moving comparison. Loung, with lasting feelings of guilt for those she'd left behind, found it difficult to fit in, whilst Chou, resigned to her fate, displayed the resilience and inner strength that is apparent in so many of her fellow countrymen and women.

I found two parts of this remarkable book particularly poignant, the heart-rending death of three-year-old Kung and the reunion between Chou and her brother Meng after a separation of eleven years. These passages were hard to read. Whilst the eventual meeting of Loung and Chou is an awkward affair, the tale of their brother Kim's escape from Cambodia to France is enthralling. The book tells a tale that underscores the importance of the bond between family members, the sheer strength of the human spirit and will to endure and most of all, it's a story of two sisters who have survived and flourished against all odds. Loung Ung has a special talent at storytelling. I recommend this book without hesitation.

It's hard and saddening to know that while I was living a life of ease, Loung and her family were struggling to survive the war in Cambodia, as well as life in the U.S.

This is an important book which carries the message that, like war veterans, refugees fo war torn countries do not leave the violence behind them, that it continues to color their life.

This book should be a must read for everyone, not only so the events in Cambodia are not forgotten, but so that we can learn to appreciate what we have.

Both books by this author are wonderful. Another deeply moving memoir is Night. The author was in a World War II. concentration camp.