I really had to remind myself throughout that it was real, and this happened; because the horrors were so unbelievable it seemed fictional.
Yet Ung writes with such truth, not only of events, but of how she felt; what hunger made her do, her desire to kill or hurt at the age of 8, because of what had been done to her.
This book was confronting, powerful, informative, emotional, devastating, and what occurs is near unthinkable.

I can't even capture what this book does.... Please read it.

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

E o carte care nu te menajează în nici un fel. O simți cum te lovește direct în stomac, cum te răscolește cu indignare, frustrare și cu nedreptatea pe care o găsești din plin în paginile ei. De multe ori am simțit nevoia de o pauză, am vrut să zic destul pentru că ororile veneau una după alta.
Nu toată lumea poate citi această carte, dar cred că trebuie să o facă, căci toată oroarea descrisă nu e fantezie, e purul adevăr.

Romanian review: Între 1975-1979, khmerii roșii au omorât între 1.5 și 2 milioane de oameni, adică aproximativ 25% din populația Cambodgiei. Au existat multe regimuri bolnave de-a lungul istoriei, nu vreau să le compar prea mult, pentru că nu poți spune că o viață este mai valoroasă decât alta, însă, procentual vorbind, khmerii roșii sunt probabil cel mai sângeros regim din istorie.
Am citit numeroase cărți despre nazism și Holocaust, lagărele de concentrare au fost cadrul unor atrocități de nedescris, însă am rămas cu senzația că teroarea a rămas oarecum în acele zone izolate. În ce privește Cambodgia, cartea asta m-a lăsat cu senzația că întreaga țară devenise un lagăr de concentrare imens. Imaginați-vă că naziștii s-ar fi hotărât, pe lângă minoritățile pe care le considerau indezirabile, să omoare orice german care avea studii superioare, orice medic sau intelectual. Asta s-a întâmplat în Cambodgia. Pe lângă că au omorât toți medicii, khmerii roșii au restricționat accesul la săpun, majoritatea produselor de igienă și medicamente. Prin urmare, a existat o întreagă rețetă a dezastrului și cruzimii.
Nu am mai citit de mult ceva care să mă cutremure și să mă îngrozească la fel de mult ca autobiografia lui Loung Ung. De-a lungul timpului am citit multe cărți scrise de Stephen King, King este celebru pentru scenele bolnave pe care și le imaginează, ei bine, nicio scenă descrisă de Stephen King nu reușește să se apropie ca diabolism de ce au făcut khmerii roșii. Nu cred că există carte horror de pe lumea asta care să descrie scene mai bolnave decât ce s-a petrecut în realitate în Cambodgia, și nu numai.
Când vine vorba de o astfel de carte, cuvintele sunt de prisos, prin urmare, nu voi mai adăuga prea multe. ,,Întâi l-au omorât pe tata" intră în lista acelor cărți care trebuie citite pentru a ne asigura că omenirea nu va uita cele mai negre momente ale sale, cele mai îngrozitoare atrocități comise de specia noastră și, mai ales, pentru a ne asigura că astfel de lucruri nu se vor mai repeta niciodată.



English review: Between 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge killed between 1.5 and 2 million people, about 25% of Cambodia's population. There have been many sick regimes throughout history, I don't want to compare them too much, because you can't say that one life is more valuable than another, but percentage-wise, the Khmer Rouge is probably the bloodiest regime in history.
I have read many books on Nazism and the Holocaust, the concentration camps were the setting for unspeakable atrocities, but I am left with the feeling that the terror has somehow remained in those isolated areas. As for Cambodia, this book left me with the feeling that the whole country had become one huge concentration camp. Imagine if the Nazis had decided, in addition to the minorities they considered undesirable, to kill any German with a higher education, any doctor or intellectual. That's what happened in Cambodia. In addition to killing all the doctors, the Khmer Rouge also restricted the access to soap, most hygiene products and medicine. So there was a whole recipe for disaster and cruelty.
It's been a long time since I have read anything that has shaken and terrified me as much as Loung Ung's autobiography. Over the years I have read many books by Stephen King, King is famous for the sick scenes he imagines, well, none of the scenes Stephen King describes come close to the diabolical evil of what the Khmer Rouge did. I don't think there is a horror book in the world that depicts scenes more sickening than what actually happened in Cambodia, and not just there.
When it comes to such a book, words are superfluous, so I won't add much more. "First They Killed My Father" is on the list of those books that must be read to ensure that mankind never forgets its darkest moments, the most terrible atrocities committed by our species and, above all, to ensure that such things will never happen again.

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.

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.

I feel the need to explain why I ended up giving this one three stars. I expected to come out of this with no less than a four star review. Ung's suffering under the Khmer Rouge is long and both physically and mentally painful. I learned a lot about the Cambodian Genocide (at least from the point of view of a child). I always wanted to keep reading and was invested in her and her family's story. That being said, the pacing had me all over the place and the writing was... okay.

I felt a little lost and confused - like I was missing parts of the story that became relevant later on. Part of this is because the story is being told from the perspective of a 5-8 year old and, understandably, she doesn't comprehend everything that's happening around her, but it could have benefited from more information concerning the larger picture. Choosing to tell her story the way she did had more drawbacks than benefits in my opinion.

The writing was great in certain spots and then really bad in others. Enough to make me question what the editors were thinking when they read it (words missing, words repeated in the same sentence, bad sentence structure), though this only seemed to be an issue toward the end.

I'm a bit disappointed. I was expecting to get more out of this memoir than I did. The book isn't that long! She easily could have expanded on certain things and still kept the book at a reasonable length. It has made me want to read and understand more about the Cambodian Genocide, but part of that is because I was left lacking explanations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ein autobiografisches Buch, in welchem ein Mensch seine Traumata der Kindheit aufarbeitet, in einem Land, in dem einer der schrecklichsten Genozide der jüngeren Vergangenheit stattfand, ist schwer zu bewerten bzw. zu kritisieren. Per se ist der Mut, die Willensstärke, die Tapferkeit und das Leid, was diesen Menschen ausmacht, fünf Sterne wert. Aber ich will ja nicht den Autor und sein Leben beurteilen, sondern das gerade beendete Buch, welches zwar interessant zu lesen war, aber auch so viele Ungereimtheiten aufwies.

Loung Ung schreibt ihre Kindheitserlebnisse, die sie zwischen ihrem 5. bis 10. Lebensjahr in Kambodscha im Präsens. Warum weigert sich ein Autor Vergangenes in der Vergangenheit zu schreiben? Soll dies authentischer klingen oder bewegender oder unmittelbarer? Soll der Leser das Gefühl haben, dass er beim Erzählen über das Abschlachten durch die Roten Khmer er quasi mitten im Geschehen ist? Mich irritiert so etwas ungemein, genauso wie die Sprache, die dieses Kind spricht. Ung verwendet die meiste Zeit eine kurze, prägnante Sprache, die recht kindgerecht wirkt, aber immer wieder schleichen sich dann Sätze und vor allem Ausdrücke in die Erzählung, die absolut nicht kindgerecht sind. Zudem kann sich kein Mensch derart detailliert an seine frühe Kindheit erinnern, wo ich wieder beim Thema bin: Wieviel Fiktion steckt in einer Autobiografie? Leider werde ich aufgrund der Erzählweise den Eindruck nicht los, dass viele Erfundenes und Ausgeschmücktes die Schilderungen der kleinen Loung zieren. Und das ist schade, denn mein Neugierde bezüglich der schrecklichen historischen Begebenheit giert nach Fakten, und so ertappte ich mich, dass ich nicht mehr wusste, ob das nun real oder fiktiv war, was ich gelesen habe.

Das mag ein ganz persönliches Problem von mir sein. Andere Leser mögen sich von derartigen gefühlsbetonten Autobiografien angesprochener fühlen. Für mich wäre ein mit Abstand erzählter Rückblick einer Betroffenen mit geschichtlichen Hintergründen wohl besser. Die Autorin ist beispielsweise Aktivisten gegen Landminen, doch hierzu geht das Buch gar nicht ein. Auch ist mein Interesse über die Beweggründe für die Schreckensherrschaft der Roten Khmer nach dem Buch eher geweckt, als gestillt. Und abschließend noch eine Ohrfeige für den Fischer-Verlag, denn wieder einmal bekommt der deutsche Leser einen gefühlsschwangeren Buchtitel präsentiert, der sich kaum im Buch widerspiegelt und meines Erachtens nur auf der Emo-Schiene den Verkauf fördern soll. Es geht Ung wirklich sehr selten um Hoffnung, es geht ihr meist um Rache, Zorn, Wut, Vergeltung und Hass. Das meine ich nicht abwertend, sondern hierfür habe ich nachdem, was dieses arme Mädchen erlebt hat, absolut Verständnis, nachdem die Eltern und zwei Schwestern umgebracht wurden. Und daher ist auch der Originaltitel "First They Killed My Father" so treffend. Aber so einen Titel kann man offensichtlich dem deutschen Büchermarkt nicht zumuten. Fehlte nur noch, dass man eine Lotusblüten mit einem Schmetterling auf das Cover platzierte.

Auch wenn ich vieles an dem Buch nicht stimmig für mich fand, bin ich doch sehr froh es gelesen zu haben und würde es trotzdem unbedingt weiterempfehlen. Insofern ist meine Rezension genauso unstimmig wie das Buch selbst.

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.