This is one of the most powerful books I've read. It's an autobiography of a young girl and her family during the oppressive Pol Pot regime. I traveled to Cambodia last year with only a faint idea of what the Khmer Rouge was and of what actually happened in that country in the late 1970s. Loung Ung's story is a story is one of survival. If it weren't, it would be too heartbreaking to bear.

Under Pol Pot, people were forced to leave their homes in the cities and move into the countryside where they were to be "rehabilitated" as farmers where many died of starvation or were executed by the Khmer Rouge. It decimated the population. Today, forty percent of the population is under the age of 15.

Cambodia is an amazingly beautiful place. The 1,000-year-old temples of Angkor are some of the most amazing structures ever built. The people of Cambodia are warm and welcoming. I am humbled by their strength.

Memoirs like this are so important and not really suited to a starred rating system.

What hit me the most was the author’s vivid account of the agony of starvation and how it is really used as a brutal tool of oppression.

What was really hard about reading this book was knowing that a little girl had to go through such monstrous atrocities, not even understanding a thing about why this massacre happened. She mentions Pol Pot a few times but at such a young age, she could not do anything but learn to be strong and brave and continue her will to live--even though she had every reason to hate everything about her life.

In the end, she transforms her immense hatred for the Khmer Rouge into a courage to change the world for the better. She is definitely an admirable woman.

I will not look at any Cambodian the same way again. It's so sad that so many massacres have happened over the course of history, within many different ethnic groups. One learns to humble oneself and sympathize with those who were or are born into less fortunate circumstances. Nothing in life should be taken for granted.

Anyone feeling sorry for themselves because we are changing our habits of going outside and meeting up with family and friends.

Read this book, and you will get over yourself very quickly. Near death and death throughout.

Vai ser bem difícil superar esse livro. Incrível incrível incrível!

Шинэ хүүхэдтэй болох үедээ уншсан болоод ч тэр үү, амар тайван амьдрал, аз жаргалтай ирээдүй ямар үнэ цэнэтэйг ухаарсаар...

This is the autobiography of a little girl's survival in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge took over. To survive, her family did what they had to in order to survive. It was tragic when some decided that it would be easier to just die. Going from a privileged life to that of starving farmers, they soon discovered what they needed to do, even the littlest of children. So much tragedy and not of all her family made it through to the end (as the title says).

I liked the way the author addressed the horror of the time. Even as horrific as it was, it was filtered through the eyes of a child. Overall, I liked this one so 3 stars.

Such a captivating account of an utterly and absolutely gut-wrenching experience. This family’s story will haunt me forever. Survivor accounts teach you so much more than facts from a textbook ever could (not that I knew much about the Cambodian genocide to begin with). My heart breaks for Luong’s family members, especially her youngest sister who spent her whole life being hungry. My heart absolutely broke when Luong talks about how she could hit her head so hard that she would forget memories of her family before they were forced into labor camps. I really loved Luong and her family members and how beautifully written her account was. Definitely a difficult read but I couldn’t put it down.

Well written, engaging

On Monday I finished reading First They Killed My Father which is the autobiographical story of a young girl's experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.  I've read a lot of books like this and I usually find them uplifting but this book just made me sad.  In Rwanda, you see people's incredible resilience and determination to overcome the prejudices of the past.  When I read the story of the boy solider, A Long Way Gone, I was heartened by the knowledge that he had escaped that life and become a strong and motivational person.

The problem is that I cannot derive anything positive at all from what happened in Cambodia. For four years the Khmer Rouge government systematically worked, starved and tortured to death 20% of the population. The reason that I picked up this book in the first place is that they have started genocide trials in Cambodia now and I wanted to understand why. I have collected a couple of links over at my other blog to make a start at understanding what happened.

This excellent and tender book details the experiences of a 5-year-old girl as she experiences starvation and the loss of her family members. She acknowledges at the start of the book that her brothers and sister helped her with the book and this accounts for the strong recall of conversations and events. This is a book rich in details about both the cosmopolitan life in Phnom Penh in the early 70s and the desperate futility of the Khmer Rouge regime.

I would unequivocally recommend this book to everyone that I know. I think everyone should read it to understand both what happened and the necessity behind bringing the Khmer Rouge members to trial. It is a really easy book to read and you will find it quite difficult to put down.  But yes... in the end it is a very sad story.  I have the most uneasy feeling that in 30 years time, we will be reading similar stories about Darfur and we'll be left wondering why we didn't do anything about it.

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

After Ana Frank's diary, this is the most emotional memoir (of course this is not a diary, everything written afterward) but these two books have a lot in common. In this memoir, Loung Ung gave us a truly inspiring very young girl and a strong family bond through all the bad times, once again to hope for everlasting humanity against all the odds.

There was only few hours of difference to change entire life of middle-class privileged family into a living hell, and of course everyone's life. Hard to grasp, beyond imagination, how easy things fall apart is scary. Above all, it's totally astonishing how children that never prepared for anything close to this, learn to survive fast and hold on to each other, losing their parents and two of their siblings.

What happened in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 (A huge massacre that killed a quarter of the country) written and narrated in different ways, but still this book gave another dimension to look at it. Things you cannot get from history books. If we all need to learn the severe outcome of war and the unbearable ugliness in it, we need such memoir from such victims.

This is a memoir of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (Kampuchea) from 1975 to 1980. It’s harrowing at times and sad but an important record.

Loung was only 5 when it started. She was the sixth of seven children living comfortably well off in Phnom Phen. Khmer Rouge soldiers forced everyone out of the cities to work in rice fields. The goal was to create a rich socialist, agrarian society (probably the stupidest idea since communism itself). Loung has a clear memory of the time despite her age. She is one of those people who have a clear and active mind and a vivid imagination. Even at her age, she saw through the propaganda BS.

Loung and her family worked long hours while starving, staying silent because everyone was informing on each other for food. She talks about the emotional toll of living in fear all the time. It led to hate and rage for her and many others. The educated were persecuted, so Loung and her siblings had to act stupid and illiterate. Ethnic cleansing took place. Her mother was half-Chinese, so they tried to darken their skin with dirt. People got sick but since all the doctors and nurses had been killed, hospitals were just where you went to die. I’m surprised as many of the family survived as they did.

Though the Angkar says we are all equal in Democratic Kampuchea, we are not. We live and are treated like slaves. In our garden, the Angkar provides us with seeds and we may plant anything we choose, but everything we grow belongs not to us but to the community. The base people eat the berries and vegetables from the community gardens, but the new people are punished if they do. During the harvest season the crops from the fields are turned over to the village chief, who then rations the food to the fifty families. As always, no matter how plentiful the crops, there is never enough food for the new people. Stealing food is viewed as a heinous crime and, if caught, offenders risk either getting their fingers cut off in the public square or being forced to grow a vegetable garden in an area near identified minefields. ... People who work in these areas do not come back to the village. ... In the new pure agrarian society, there is no place for disabled people.

Among the many crimes that exist in the Khmer Rouge society, bartering for food is viewed as an act of treason. If caught, the trader is whipped into confessing the names of all parties involved. The Khmer Rouge believes one individual should not have what the rest of the country does not have. When one person secretly acquires more food than the others have there is an inequality of food distribution in the community. Since we are all supposed to be equal, if one person starves, then all should starve.

The narration is in present tense. I didn’t really like it. Luong noted that she tried it in past tense first but it didn’t feel immediate. Still, I would’ve preferred past tense.

Language: None
Sexual Content: Some descriptions of nudity and attempted rape
Violence: Executions, beatings, war crimes
Harm to Animals: Some pets get eaten. Others are hunted for food.
Harm to Children: Many orphaned; emotional abuse; some die of starvation and disease; soldiers kill infants and children for fun, etc. Victims of war crimes.
Other (Triggers):  Attempted rape of child; bombardments