I feel bad I didn't love this book--maybe I've been jaded by too many tales of misery and atrocity. Or maybe it's just reading this so soon after Egger's What is the What about Sudan or for that matter after Vaddey's The Shadow of the Banyan, also about this period, this book has a lot to live up to. I admit I'm someone who finds it hard to just go with the flow of the practice of memoirs written with the immediacy of a novel. I just don't find it credible--especially in this case where it's written from the point of view of a very young child narrator. Ung was only five years old when the Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated her city of Phenom Pehn, less than eight when she was trained to be a soldier. The book is also written in the very literary fiction present tense, with events she didn't experience but could only imagine told through the gauze of italics. I wished at times she had told the story straight--it doesn't need to be tarted up. Or that like Vaddey or Eggers, she had written this as a novel, and not claimed this as memoir.

Interestingly, Ung addresses some of these issues in her afterward about writing the book. She says she takes offense at those who feel someone so young would not remember--wouldn't even feel the trauma. She wanted to give voice to a child going through such experiences. She also defended the use of present tense. She said she originally tried to write this in the past tense, but felt that "by writing in the past tense" she was protecting herself. That she needed that immediacy. But I actually think present tense--unless handled very, very skillfully--attracts attention to itself, and so can be more distancing than the past tense.

That said, this did give a day to day sense of life under the Khmer Rouge I didn't get either from the film The Killing Fields nor Veddey's novel In the Shadow of the Banyan. Part of that is because being partly Chinese, Ung experienced racism and had to hide her background, even her skin color, to avoid "ethnic cleansing"--giving her a different perspective than I've heard in other stories of this period. She spoke of the favor given to "Base People"--those native Khmer from the countryside who had been there for generations, as opposed to the "new people" driven there from the cities. And she certainly gave a vivid, harrowing account of hunger--from the physical effects to what it drives you to. Despite my criticism, this is definitely a remarkable story of survival.

I was in Cambodia a few months ago. I wish I had read this book before. In any case, it's amazing how resilient human beings can be. It's an amazing country, people are happy despite being poor.
The book is tough, extremely tough. I had to read a different book before sleeping, otherwise I would have nightmares.

Whether you call it communism, socialism, democratic socialism, national socialism or some other similar name, the results follow a long familiar pattern of rigged elections, "re-educated" or killed opposition, closing all but state run press, making guns illegal, etc, etc. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung is another story of a family in Cambodia this time before and after the takeover by Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge army. They immediately rounded up and shot any high-ranking officials and bureaucrats they could find. The remaining population was forced to evacuate the cities and moved to rural collective farms to work as slave labor to grow food for the communes. The author shares her memories of those shocking days when her family tried to blend in with the mostly poor peasant class to avoid execution. It all changed when she was only five years old and the army gave short notice that everyone had to leave the cities because of an impending attack and that they would all be back in about three days, which was an outright lie as there was no plan for anyone to return to the cities. They all lived in horrible conditions working long days at hard manual labor, eating in communal kitchens, and subjected to abuse by the guards and those in charge of each village. You can guess some of what happens based on the title, but the author and her siblings tried their best to stay together throughout their ordeal. If you think socialism is a great idea whose time has come, read this book and numerous other first-hand accounts from those who have lived under socialist regimes. Highly recommended!

n  "I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it."n

A heartbreaking story indeed. If I was an avid memoir reader, I think I would have given it 4 stars. I bought a pile of books over the summer and I was allowed to pick one extra for free - I picked this one. I can't accurately discern why exactly I'm giving it 3 stars; I guess that makes me a lousy reviewer but this book just felt like a novel that my high school teacher would have encouraged us to read. I definitely do think this is a book worth reading because it successfully captures the grueling adversities of the Cambodian genocide and genuinely entails an interesting, yet deeply sad, story but unfortunately it was just not my cup of tea. The fact that I gave it 3 stars is purely subjective and I can definitely see why some may have given it 4 or 5.

Instagram: @helnemisis

This is a true survival story. The memoirs of Loung as she lived through the Khmer Roug take over of her country from 1975-1979 as a five year old girl with her parents and siblings are unbelievable. She ended up becoming an orphan as the soldiers murder her parents and two sisters during this horrible time in Cambodia. It is sometimes tough to read but her strength is truly amazing as she survives the worst time in her countrys history alone in a camp for child soldiers as Pol Pot reigns terror on all of Cambodia.

I Would’ve never picked this book up on my own but OMG. Sooooooo heartbreaking. So informative.

I, literally, abandoned this book half-way through. I may not be an expert on good prose but I definitely recognize when I am NOT privy to such. This novel rests on the fact that it is an account of real events. A people's version of one of the "greatest-atrocities-of-the-twentieth-century." I don't intend to demean the subject matter here, but a lot of this book regurgitates, unquestioningly, a textbook understanding of the Khmer Rouge. The author blantly inserts generic socio-political backstory via her father's character and... dammit it's annoying!

Most memoirs tend to really get under my skin. It is bad enough now that so many people hold this democratic notion that everyone has a story to tell. Sure, such may be true, but most people can't tell a story.* Even worse, as is the case here, is when the author has such a compelling story that it is virtually an individual right to recount the events and a moral directive that we appreciate the text. The imperative of most memoirs of this type is a reductionist, monolithic, unreflexive projective vomit of "facts" where only the "truth" is of value.**

To be fair to this author, however, her writing is not as bad as a lot of memoirs. I'm giving her book two stars but I tend to be a harsh grader anyway. Just because I don't appreciate the book-as-written does mean that I am not engaged by horror and sorrow at what she has lived through under the Khmer Rouge.

For something more didactic regarding Cambodia circa 1975-1979, read "Sideshow" by William Shawcross.
Be careful, though, it's a little dated (yes, he refers to Cambodians as a "sensual race") and it also purports to be nonfiction. It doesn't suffer from some unblinking sense of entitlement, however. Shawcross is true journalist; an outsider to the story. He's not speaking from a point of unimpeachable privilege, he's not telling his story, but just a story and he's backing it up with research and careful analysis, as well as, managing to take out all the bullshit rhetorical devices.

* no, I cannot write either (and, yes, I am bitter).
** On this subject, I like "The Hazards of Memoir Writing" by Edward Said. Said responds to some of his critics about "erroneously" reconfiguring the past in narrative.

Starting in 1975, after the end of the Vietnam War, Cambodia suffered an internal war that exhibited the most savage, bloody, horrible war crimes of modern times. “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers” is the autobiography of a young girl who lived through this nightmare. Many of her family did not survive.

In 1975, Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to Khmer Rouge forces led by Pol Pot. Loung Ung, the author, was a five year old girl at that time. She describes life in the city fondly. The streets were lined with noodle shops, small markets selling fresh food, shops selling all manner of goods from t-shirts to sunglasses to watches to jewelry. The streets were busy with people buying and selling goods, kids playing, people eating. It was a bustling and generally happy atmosphere.

That all changed overnight, literally. One day things were as described above, and the next day, as Pol Pot took control from the government, everyone was forced to leave the city and migrate to the country. They had to leave behind whatever they could not carry. Loung and her family walked for many days before arriving at a small village where they were assigned to live. Here they, along with millions of others throughout the country, were expected to work as slaves for the new regime.

It soon became clear that the Khmer Rouge were “cleansing” the population of all government workers and all non-ethnic Cambodians, anyone of mixed blood. Loung’s father had been a government worker, and her mother was partially Chinese, and they knew the Khmer Rouge would kill them if they were exposed. The family tried mightily for many months to conceal there origins, but their light skin and facial features could not be hidden.

Over the course of four years she loses every valuable possession, she learns to eat bugs and worms, her father is murdered, her sister dies of malnutrition, her brothers are forced to work in distant labor camps, she survives a rape attempt (at the age of 9!), her family starves and they are submitted to mind control and torture. Throughout the country, millions of people were starved to death and tortured to death. It was a waking nightmare.

After four years, the Khmer Rouge are ousted by the Vietnamese army. Eventually, she and one brother escape to Thailand, and from there they are accepted into the US.

In this review, I have glossed over many, many details and anecdotes. This is a fascinating account. The events described in the book are so brutal it is hard to comprehend. Many books of fiction have not come close to this level of violence and abuse. But, it is all real. I applaud the author for her ability to survive such an ordeal.

Her writing is highly readable. I encourage people to read this book. It is not only an account of brutality, but also of survival. It also provide us with a cautionary tale that illuminates how people can change from civilized to barbarian in a matter of hours and days. While reading this book, I tried to imagine this happening in the western world. This is proof that this can happen, and it can happen very quickly. We should not take our liberties and life styles for granted. One despot can destroy an entire society literally overnight. If you stop to think, we have had numerous cases in recent years. Think of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Hussein, Syria, Bosnia, etc. This did not occur in the distant past, and it is relevant to us today.

Kudos to Loung Ung for having the mental fortitude to relive this horror and share it with us. May we all hear what she has to say.

I read this memoir of Loung Ung on the heels of A Fine Balance, and I must say, now I need to read something light and joyful to regain a little balance of my own. Of course, we all knew, secondhand, what was happening in Cambodia in the 1970s. We heard horrifying tales of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s killing fields. But, hearing such news from a reporter, and hearing the account of a victim, are entirely different experiences.

I marvel at the resilience of people who endure such atrocities; I wonder at the cruel nature of those who follow such a man and commit such acts. Loung Ung’s account is all the more poignant because her four-year trial began at the age of five. An age when we do not let our children cross the street on their own. Watching soldiers march her father away to his death was not even the worst thing she witnessed. The hatred she so rightfully felt toward the Khmer Rouge and the soldiers of that regime must have been beyond imagination, and must easily have influenced every day of her life since. How horrible to have so much to want revenge for and no one to hold accountable or way to render any semblance of justice.

I couldn’t help chronicling my own life alongside hers. When she was being ripped from her life in Phnom Penh and put onto a road of starvation and hard labor, I was graduating college and agonizing over making a good career choice. When she was being delivered from the refugee camps in Thailand to a future in Vermont, I was getting married and embarking on a new life of my own. Between those two events, she endured the unimaginable and I failed to fully appreciate the golden blessings of my own good fortune.

It is important that we read these kinds of accounts. They enrich our understanding of our own position in the world and they remind us why it is important that we pay attention and care about what is happening beyond our own lives and our own borders.

Read for Tales & Co. | Review originally posted on A Skeptical Reader.

First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung is a memoir of the author’s childhood living under the Pol Pot regime. It opens right before the Khmer Rouge army storms into Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Ung’s family has to abandon their home and belongings overnight and ends with her migration to the United States. Encapsulated within is the story of a young Chinese-Cambodian girl who survived a genocide that exterminated millions of her people.

As I had no previous knowledge of this event, the dreadful title of the memoir kept my stomach in knots as my mind constantly speculated over when such tragedies would come to an end, or if they would at all. Not helped by the fact that the tortures inflicted on the author and her family are relentless and without mercy. Living under an oppressive regime where all individuality is stripped is scary enough but the consistent humiliations and threat of annihilation synthesized a dystopian society in my head unlike any other. Last year I’d read n  The Rape of Nankingn and while that book is a textbook autopsy of war crimes, horrors that have been speculated to be the cause for the author’s suicide, First They Killed My Father somehow felt even more devastating because a young child stood at the center screaming for justice.

The memoir is somewhat fictionalized with snippets of dream-like imaginations from the young Ung. It’s debatable whether these scenes are a reaction to the trauma inflicted upon her or some other underlying psychological condition. I’m not a huge fan of creative nonfiction so I don’t care about having to question the validity of the way a nonfiction narrative unfolds, however, in this case, I didn’t object to Ung’s approach to storytelling. The fictionalized events read like self-inflicted wounds but perhaps awarded the author some therapy I must allow as an interloper.

If you have even the slightest appreciation for engaging memoirs, First They Killed My Father is a must-read. If not for the fact that it reads like fiction then to educate oneself about one of the most sickening genocides in modern history.

It's complex how I inadvertently ended up hearing a lot of stuff from different sides of politics. I still occasionally end up at dinner tables with people who think and speak openly in racist/sexist opinions around me. I am married to a man who was a conservative Republican (now, a conservative Democrat) who is eleven years older than me. He is of ‘the Greatest Generation.’ I am a ‘Baby Boomer.’

I recognize a genocide is occurring when I hear about certain mass slaughters of people. Usually the murders are happening because of differences in race, religion or ethnicity. In reading other autobiographies like ‘First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers’ by Loung Ung I see the slaughter of children happens in ALL of them.

'First They Killed My Father', the autobiography of surviving a genocide by Loung Ung, first published in 2000, is a harrowing read. But however terrible the description of life under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge communists was, it is an important and necessary book for people to read. We lucky people of the Western World are oblivious to the worst men can do. We'd rather blithely attribute the cause of genocides to the innocent victims somehow. We don't care to really understand the genesis of genocides, and we often don't take the time to learn about them.

I worked as a secretary at a public school which accepted Muslim refugees from the Serbian-Yugoslavian war and one of the Somalian wars. I heard stories from the Sarajevo children - like, they had to pick out the bits fallen off of nearby floating and rotting bodies in the river water they had gone to fetch or bathe in when they were ten years old.

Five to ten years old is the age where a lot of authors who witnessed a genocide seem to begin their true stories. They write of their innocent childhoods. Then the sudden killing all around them begins of their parents, grandparents, cousins, friends and neighbors, without much warning, during an ordinary day of work and school. The looting starts by soldiers or strangers doing the killing and raping. The burning down of their childhood homes. Next, comes starvation. No home to sleep inside. No rights to anything, for anything. The stench of death everywhere. Dead and mutilated ordinary people lying on the ground of neighborhood yards and streets, unburied. All this seen and experienced by five year olds who somehow survive, grow up, and write an autobiography like this one.

Gentle reader, 'First They Killed My Father' is about the genocide which happened in Cambodia in 1975-1980. What makes this autobiography particularly wrenching and poignant is it is written by a survivor who was a child during the murders of her family. How she survived is a genuine miracle.

The book's one flaw is the author narrates, present tense, of her experience AS a five year old with too much verbal and intellectual proficiency for any five year old narrator I have ever known (excepting one three-year-old genius I met in my past). There is a mix of child and adult awareness in the book’s narration. The author speaks with the mental dexterity and vocabulary of an adult in words of what probably were inchoate feelings of rage and loss when she was really five years old. But like myself who has memories of stuff which happened when I was two, she remembers it all.

Trauma does that to some of us - nightmare images imprinted permanently, into unforgotten vivid memories. Context may be missing. For awhile. Then a call to a psychologist is sometimes necessary to help with the context of the memories...


From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot:

"Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian revolutionary and politician who governed Cambodia as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1979. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and a Khmer nationalist, he was a leading member of Cambodia's communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 until 1997 and served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. Under his administration, Cambodia was converted into a one-party communist state governed according to Pol Pot's interpretation of Marxism–Leninism."

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_R...

"The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic, xenophobic, paranoid, and repressive. Many deaths resulted from the regime's social engineering policies and the "Maha Lout Ploh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward, which caused the Great Chinese Famine. The Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivisation similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency even in the supply of medicine led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria. The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Arbitrary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide led to the death of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population."


The social labels change, the political justifications change, the group enduring genocidal techniques changes - but the techniques of genocide are forever.

-Vilification of the 'other' to justify mass murder or torture
-Murder of everybody in revenge for the past injustices of a few
-Built-in institutional inequality creating 'slave' classes
-Lack of support for universal and honest education for the masses
-Lack of health-care for both mental and physical ailments of the sick deemed useless to society
-Lack of support or respect for the elderly


Many autobiographies by people who have survived genocides around the world are translated into English and have been purchased by libraries all over the world. Despite this, I often talk to people who know nothing of them. Some who are aware of genocides from the evening news or news websites often tell me it is because those people brought it on themselves, or they were sinful in the eyes of God, or they are of a lazy race of humans doomed to genocide because of their rotten or corrupt cultures and natures, or because of their 'wrong' religion. They lack discipline, I have been sometimes told, and they do not know the meaning of hard work.

I am not making up stories about what people in America have said. Many people believe these falsehoods about victims of genocides. These people I have known in my personal experience were White or of White American culture because I’m an elderly American and I have lived here all of my life in American cities. The people I have heard express opinions about genocides in other countries were born in America or are naturalized citizens. Many Americans are third-generation immigrants from India, China and Europe. Most were raised as Christians of one sort or another, some of which are considered cults, but some are Buddhists, or Hindus. No matter the religion or race, though, I have heard from many Americans that the victims of genocides somehow brought it on themselves.

I am in my late sixties, and I look mostly White. I was a quiet secretary during the era of IBM electric typewriters, and when physical paperwork copies were filed in physical cabinets, when secretary 'girls' had to know shorthand, and we had only male managers as bosses. People knew me as an obedient girl of no opinions. It was a normal presentation for women of all ages in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I married a White Republican eleven years older than me whose friends all tended to be conservatives, Republican or right-leaning libertarians/entrepreneurs, or White Christian fundamentalists/evangelicals. I ended up at parties (business and private) or with people in social situations who spoke in racist/sexist terms and jokes. People often utilized biblical commandments and beliefs to attribute reasons for their own successes or status in life. Or later, when I went to college as a 40-year-old, I heard students attribute their success to Buddha. Or gods in the Hindu faith.

Generally, they were nice people, even if sexist and racist. Most of them liked children and pets.

The prejudices and opinions from the friends and acquaintances of my older conservative husband (not the folks I met from my jobs or school, some being Buddhists and Hindu immigrants) came from ignorance. They had childhoods of being indoctrinated by equally ignorant and prejudiced 'Greatest Generation' parents or grandparents born around 1900. Most either never got a high school degree but worked up various ladders in America. A few got some kind of college degree. Most of them attained the middle-class through hard work AND because they were White men with acceptable culturally-appropriate American manners. Most were raised in White culture and neighborhoods, or aspired to join the culturally White middle-class. Most had kids, most wanted their kids to go to college, some did send their kids to college.

Many of these elderly folk now argue a lot with their adult college-educated kids and grandkids who vote Democrat and believe in what they, the conservatives, consider socialism or communism, which they, the conservatives, violently disagree with as a government choice. Then they pick up their social security checks and make doctor appointments paid by Medicare. They often have in their past bought their first homes or gone to school under GI Bill loans (if male and a veteran), or had gotten and worked first jobs under federal apprenticeship programs.

They still think genocides occur to people who were bad in some way, if they even are aware of any particular genocide. Often they know of one genocide - the Nazi one - but these others are either unknown to them or they believe they weren't genocides of the same level of horror as that of the Nazis trying to exterminate all of the Jews of Europe.

Sigh.

Today, I am no longer a quiet obedient secretary, but a bitter feminist bitch, and a lot more outspoken. I have a hell of a lot of opinions. Like this one - Wars and genocides kill a lot of innocent children, whatever their religion or ethnicity or culture or type of government. The sufferings of these children are enormous, horrible and soul-crushing. How do the sufferings of these millions of innocent young toddlers and children fit into the racist/cultural/religious theories of why they deserve to die or suffer mind-destroying tortures? Tell me how you, gentle reader, if you do, 'intellectualize' away the broken, sometimes raped, and abused bodies of children through the typical lenses which many adults use in genocidal wars of 'foreigners'? That their parents 'supported' the bad or wrong kind of religion, class, politics, culture?

You can't lie to me, those of you who still do not examine your beliefs and biases or ignorance or racial or cultural prejudices. I heard you. I saw you. You. Are. The. Bad. People.

The author's choice of using the present tense narration through her childhood eyes worked wonders for making you feel like you're a witness in the midst of the family's experiences.

Despite the Animal Farm-esque brutality, it's still heartening how you could see Loung transform from a spoilt and pampered city girl into a strong, albeit still selfish, fighter with a fierce drive for survival. The restrained expressions of emotions didn't hide the love shared between the family members and some of the best moments in the book occur during such scenes. And in the way she wrote about her Pa, it's obvious how much she loved him and the words were beautiful to read in their child-like worship of a larger-than-life father.

The editing wasn't very good for such a renowned publisher though; you encounter words such as 'loose' instead of 'lose' and 'bare' where 'bear' should be. While such basic errors did not discount the power of the storytelling, they did break the flow of the story, and called the editor's credibility to question.

Speaking of credibility, not really a fan of the 'imaginary' sections although I understand that it's comprehensible why the young Loung would have those images running through her mind.

The story itself is harrowing, but there were a few parts in which I got the sense of dramatization for its own sake. Coloured by a child's impression of a brutal experience, the narration in a nutshell tells me that rich city people are good and wise; the poor peasants are crass and cruel and are all on power trips. For all I know though, probably that's what really happened and that there really weren't any grey areas.

Not much was touched upon in terms of lessons learnt other than that in times of turmoil, it pays to be selfish and violent until the foreigners come to set everything straight; the baddies got punished, the lucky survivors got saved.

Still, this is a story that deserves to be read simply because of the scarcity of actual accounts in English from one of the bleakest implosions a nation could have experienced.