On a recent trip to Cambodia I got to witness it's rich culture, lush landscapes and delicious, delicious food. At every turn I also saw the remnants of a painful past. I spent a hot afternoon walking through the Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum, having my breath taken away as I walked from room to room, each worse than the last. In one section of the former prison, I walked into a hastily made brick cell and felt so instantly claustrophobic I had to run out into the open air.The pictures, informational plaques and even the conversation, held via hand gestures, with a former prisoner couldn't help me grasp the genocide that occurred not that long ago.

Later I went to Choeng Ek, the most (in)famous of the killing fields. I walked up to, around and even in the commemorative stupa that had been built to honor the murdered and to hold their remains. Seeing children's skulls display evidence of so much violence with the cracks, dents and bullet holes broke my heart. Walking through the grounds and stepping on peoples' bones and clothing remnants that were making their way up through the dirt... Knowing that every year the rains would bring up more remains.... How do people make peace with that? How do they move on?

Loung Ung lived through the genocide and has carried on her life by teaching others about what happened, helping them to survive the atrocities that seems to keep happening around the world. In her memoir "First They Killed My Father: A daughter of Cambodia remembers" she tells of the Cambodia genocide from the eyes of a child. This perspective that makes what happened all the more heart-wrenching but also makes the facts easier to understand. (I use that word loosely, because I can never understand why what happened did, but I want to, need to, understand the facts of what did happen.)

Genocide is such a big concept. The Cambodia genocide was so messy, political, based on a series of events that made it possible. A child's memory strips out all of the extraneous facts and delivers only what they know. In her memoir, she inserts the historical facts necessary to keep her story moving, but she inserts them as dialogue from her father delivered to her. History as would be explained to a small child doesn't include the political intricacies that make our world so confusing. For this, I was grateful to Ung. Her tale helped me establish some basic knowledge from which I can expand with future reading.

A quick read, "First They Killed My Father: A daughter of Cambodia remembers" is the kind of book you start reading and don't want to put down. It's a great introduction to anyone interested in visiting Cambodia, learning about their history or learning about genocide in general.

A survivor story of the hardiest, youngest victim of the Communist cause I have ever read about. I do not know what is more harrowing: the unjust yet indiscriminate executions by the Khmer Rouge, or the replacement of curious innocence with vitriolic rage in a little girl’s heart. These red dictators—Pol Pot and Mao Zedong alike—prey on their own people by using psychological warfare and pitting their violent anger against others; despite my familiarity with this fact, it is still jarring to read such bloody thoughts in the head of a six-, seven-, eight-year-old girl.

This book begins with simple prose and simple thoughts; having been out of the loop politically, the greatest concerns in her mind were the soreness of her soles and the size of her ration. As the book progresses—hunger becomes famine, sunken stomachs become swollen, families become fragmented—her thoughts grow more elaborate, and the memoir grows more grotesque. As her dialogue shrinks into silence, her internal vocabulary grows. The transformation of mindset is palpable and it truly adds dimension to this great work. My only gripe with this novel is the occasional error and misspelling.

There are plenty of parallels between Loung Ung’s experience and my family’s experience in China. I was pleasantly surprised to find out she is part Chinese. Just like so many others, both our families have lost so many members from executions by the revolutionaries, their pre-revolutionary social standings having marked their shallow graves while they were still alive. Furthermore both our families had been fragmented as we immigrated from our home countries—no matter how badly your home country abuses you, you still feel a connection, almost an obligation, to your people and land—in hopes of a better and freer life, regretfully not being able to travel as a whole family.

Stories like Loung Ung’s life are crucial today because the storytellers and memory holders are still alive today. Yet people today do all these survivors of regimes an utter disservice by taking no strides to respect them, let alone listen to them. First They Killed My Father is a great place to start in learning about the plight of the red East. Reading from a textbook can only provide so many statistics and death tolls, but it does not begin to encompass the human suffering these people endured not even fifty years ago.

Heartbreaking, Encouraging, Gripping & Powerful! An Eye Opening, Exceptional Read! I Loved It!

Always hard to review a book like this when it is such a devastating story. But a really great read, especially for a topic I wasn’t very familiar on. It’s hard to imagine the suffering so many Cambodians went through so recently, and in cases like Loung Ungs, at such a young age.

This was a heart-breaking memoir. It was very difficult to read . . . but imagine how much harder it was to live it.

During the period of 1975-80, Cambodia went through tough times. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the communist party called Khmer Rouge systematically killed more than 2 million civilians (25% of the population). This massacre has been called as Cambodian Genocide. A young girl of the age 5-8 has narrated the turmoil she went through along with her family during this period.

It is a difficult book to read - has lot of human suffering. Khmer Rouge forces the people to live in inhuman conditions. Reader finds it suffocating to continue with the story at many instances. However, the book being an autobiography, author has honestly narrated the sufferings the Cambodians faced during this devastating times. This book demands the attention of the world. It also acts as a warning for wrong understanding of an ideology.

The narration of the book is from the perspective of a young girl, 5-8 years old. The maturity of the narration does not convince the reader as the story of a young girl. (Compare it with Anne Frank's "The diary of an young girl") Author could have used a different technique.

The soul shattering story of the Pol Pot decimation of Cambodia / Kampuchea from the viewpoint of a 5 year old girl through to when she was 9 years old! That more powerful as the story is recounted from the viewpoint of a child and that more devastating for the ordeals her and he family, her people underwent.
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It's not the best written book, but that is as much its power as it is meant to be a child's voice. The underlying strength, fortitude and pure doggedness of the survivors is remarkable, as is how their diaspora have mostly prospered. If you know little or nothing about the Cambodian Pol Pot regime, here's a place to start with a ground level view.. literally.
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Thank you Loung Ung for sharing your story, and all your amazing work campaigning against land mines. 9 out of 12.

O poveste tulburatoare, un roman scris cu inima, plin de durere si amaraciune, trist si autenic. Am ramas impresionata nu doar de poveste in sine, ci si de Loung Ung, aceasta copila care numai la cinci ani reuseste sa supravietuiasca iadului in care e aruncata. Recunosc ca nu stiam prea multe despre istoria Cambogiei, probabil si pentru ca am avut si noi, europenii, parte de suferintele noastre si parca ne raportam altfel la vecinii nostri decat la o tara exotica si indepartata. Insa si alti oameni au suferit, iar razboialele si nedreptatile nu au avut loc doar pe continentul nostru.
E greu sa vorbesti despre poveste si sa spui cat si ce ti-a placut, pentru ca de fapt nu e nimic de placut, e doar suferinta, e un roman care taie in carne vie si nu are cum sa nu iti ajunga la suflet. E o poveste despre familie si supravietuire, e mai mult decat simpla fictiune si merita sa ajunga la cat mai multi cititori.

4 stars. This is an event in history that I never knew about. In 1975 The Khmer Rouge overthrew the government and over the next 4 years killed an estimated 2,000,000 Cambodians by murder, torture, and starvation. Loung was age 5 when this began with her family consisting of Ma, Pa and 6 brothers and sisters ranging in age of 3 to 18. Loung tells this heart-breaking story through the eyes of a 5 year-old who is trying to understand what is happening and why. This is a story of her amazing survival when all hope seemed to be lost.
I admire the author as she was true to herself... she didn't always paint herself in the best light. Her struggles were real, and the fact that she was able to survive is just amazing. I was also age 5 in 1975 so this was even more impactful to me. As I remember how wonderful my life was at that age and how it could all be taken away at a moments notice. Her family was extremely brave and strong. I really enjoyed reading this story and I plan to read the next book by the author. I wish her and her family all the best.

I visited SE Asia this year & visiting S-21 prison & the Killing Fields moved me more than anything else I saw.

& this book moved me more than anything else I read this year.

No child should suffer what Loung does and she doesn't flinch from telling things that show her in a less than favourable light - but if she hadn't been an extremely tough five year old, she would never have survived in one of the few funny lines in the book, Loung says she doesn't know how her far softer sister did!

Some recountings are like visualisations from when Loung was much older, but although they are a little jarring I think they are an important part of her story.

Most highly recommended!

Very often, when people are asked to recall genocides in 20th century, Jews Holocaust, Stalin's purge, Rwanda or the Cultural Revolution are the very first things come to mind. People rarely remember the Cambodia genocide (or they have never heard of) as it was always overshadowed by the Vietnam war with no or little media coverage. However, it doesn't mean this is any less painful. I admire Loung Ung for her dedication on telling the world what happened under the rule of Khmer Rogue.

I'm glad that I came across this book while searching for a perfect book on Cambodia history. The author takes us through this event through the eyes of a 5 years old child which make it much easier to digest comparing to any history book. Although this book doesn't elaborate the situation in terms of politics, it entices you to find out more by yourself.

This book is so commonplace at each and every bookshop, side alley, and tourist trap in Siem Reap, Cambodia. After the first three or four times the book was shoved in front of my face on my trip to Cambodia, I could no longer fetter my curiosity. (I purchased the book for 3$ USD but later found out at the duty free shops at Siem Reap Airport that the original costs around 15$ USD.)

Anyone travelling to Cambodia is most certainly not looking for a party. One goes there to salve that in-born need to experience the magical ancient history of the place; to behold the grand hindu temples built by the Khmer Civilization at the height of their power from 800-1432 AD, the most alluring of which is the magnificent temple-city of Angkor Wat. But lurking somewhere in the shadows is the more recent and foreboding history of Cambodia - the very horrific Pol Pot regime of 1975-79. If you should visit, you will not be able to deny this side of Cambodia.

If you don't want to pour over long historical articles in order to learn about what happened during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, then this book is for you. It details the life of the author from age 5 to 9 under the Khmer Rouge communist regime. At first I felt that the memories of a child that young could not possibly have been retained accurately but that confusion was solved in the book's first few pages, where the author acknowledges her brother Khuoy (who was 18 or so at the time) for providing her with accounts of their lives under the Khmer Rouge. Furthermore, towards the middle of the book, I came to realize that harsh experiences such as the author has had would have surely become ingrained in a child's mind and therefore indelible from memory. This thought lent more credibility to the author's recollected story.

Books such as this cannot be judged for their writing and prose and plot, for their purpose is different, and so I won't. I will say however that the pages flow fast and the English is simple. The story is simple true history; the author narrates the events of her difficult childhood in present tense, reliving her younger self's memories and successfully makes the whole reading experience very visceral and palpable. In this case this can be a bad thing since the very livid imagery of the pol-pot brutalities, the accounts of war and the struggle for survival with just a meal a day left me fighting back tears and that accompanying choking sensation.

It can be said for certain that this book is not for the faint of heart. And should you choose to read it, all assertions you may have of your insensitivity to violence or of your lack of empathy will be broken down and weeded out. I was depressed for the entire week or so that I was reading this book. Yet even as I was acutely aware of this change, I could not put the book down. (Perhaps the emotions I experienced reading this book were amplified/supplemented by the fact that I started it when I was in Cambodia. Perhaps, that made it all the more 'real' for me).