When reading First They Killed My Father, by Loung Ung, the audience is exposed to a compelling book filled with adventure and tragedy. It is about a girl who lives a fairly comfortable life in Phnom Penh with her parents and siblings. When the Khmer Rouge takes over Cambodia, her family is forced to flee into separate labor camps. As the story progresses, it is startling to comprehend that the book is actually a memoir. This is her story.
tThis book not only gives insight into Loung’s personal life, but also provides background information about the Khmer Rouge so it is easy to understand. It is interesting to read the book, because it is told from her memories of when she was five. This book covers a span of five years; from when she was five to ten. There are some Cambodian words incorporated into the story, which gives the dialogue more style. The plot is always full of suspense, because the audience does not know what’s going to happen next and who is going to die.
tSome weaknesses in the novel are that it is about memories of when she was five. It is hard to believe that Loung remembered everything when she was five in vivid detail. Then again, such a journey can never be forgotten. The book does not elaborate when it refers to “taking people away.” The people in the village were disappearing one by one, and some were taken by soldiers. Being taken away by soldiers basically means that the person is going to get killed. The author does not elaborate on these small details, but it helps the readers get thinking.
tThe novel was the best memoir that I have ever read. It was mixed with emotions and feelings. I would recommend this book to everybody. The book will give the audience completely different outlook on life. Once you read it, you won’t regret it.

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 just finished reading this book - another one I had a hard time putting down - I read it in 3 days. I learned so much from this memoir which takes place, starting in April 1975 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. At this point the Cambodian Civil War has not quite taken hold. The narrator of the story is a 5 year old girl, the 2nd to youngest in a family of 7 children. She comes from a rather well-off, very loving middle-class family who live in the capital of Cambodia; Phenom Penh. The 5 year old takes us through 5 years of the war up to the S. Vietnamese liberating them. Eventually, she makes her way to the U.S. as a refugee.
This unbelieveably true story had me in tears in places. The author, Loung Ung is a real survivor. She also wrote a sequel to this one called Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind which I plan on reading.
For those of you who enjoy reading memoirs that take place in far off places, or about historical eras, or to read a book about a very strong woman who is a real survivor; I would highly recommend this book. It is very educational & at the same time, moving, emotional & thought provoking.

Was recommended this a couple of years ago when I visited the killing fields in Cambodia. I cried through the majority of this book. Absolutely devastating story.

Of the “female survivor of an atrocity writes a memoir” genre (which is a surprisingly huge genre), this might be my favorite. Right up there with In Order to Live.

The pros of this book are clear: it is riveting, well-written, historically informative, and thought-provoking. Nothing interest me more than how societies descend into true chaos, and this book was as interesting of a case study as any.

The book does have one glaring con, which is that it has to be at least some degree fabricated. The author lived the book’s events from ages 5-10 and recalls conversations, scents, emotions, and intuitions with perfect clarity. I’m okay with some creative liberty, but I would’ve appreciated it if the author would’ve acknowledged this gap head-on (the prologue of Last Green Valley comes to mind).

Nevertheless, it was a top notch read. I learned a lot and I hated for it to be over. 5 stars any time both of those statements are true.

It's hard to rate such a tragic story. Another country gone mad and a young girl lives through hunger, disease, lose of parents, political inanity, homelessness, hopelessness and war. This is a brutal written memoir of a brutal insane period in Cambodia.

wow. definitely a tough read but so so important and incredibly well-written. hearing this story from a young girl’s perspective but written with the language and maturity of an adult made it so powerful because it depicted the raw emotion and confusion of Loung so well. touching and devastating and incredible. easiest 5/5 I’ve ever given, thank you Lauren Oster

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.

Confession- I could not stomach reading more than halfway.

I wanted to like this book for multiple reasons- no-one wants to dislike the work of a traumatised Khmer Rouge survivor and human rights activist.

However, this book is poorly written for a few reasons, some of which are more tolerable than others. The major reason why I couldn't finish it was the narrative voice.

Perhaps being written from the perspective of a five year-old girl is supposed to give the author license for a juvenile narrative voice. However, to me the narrative voice was intolerable. The death of her father (the spoiler's in the title) and other family is described in such trite ramblings and gimmicks such as melodramatic narrated dreams. To me it was not sincere. This is the biggest problem because I felt that such melodrama does a terrible injustice to the Cambodian people and the times. I'm waiting for a better book on the Khmer Rouge and would love to hear suggestions.

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

Heartbreaking and tragic. Ung's story is one that must be read.

Honestly I don't know how to review this book. I don't think I have ever read a book any more difficult to read due to its graphic nature of such a difficult subject matter.

Loung was only 5 years old when her family was forced out of their home. Luckily (if that's the right word choice) her family was fairly well-to-do so they didn't have to be among the people to walk barefoot (at first) since they had a car. They also had possessions they were able to trade for food. Loung had several siblings and, as one would imagine, they were split up and there were deaths.

I can't believe what Loung went through as a child 5-9 years old. The things she did to survive, I can't even imagine a child that young being able to do.

I was interested in this book because I taught high school for 25 years, and when I taught multicultural lit and we read books like The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston and were studying Asian countries, a colleague and friend of mine at the high school would come in and talk to the class and show a slideshow. She was about the same age as Loung Ung when her family was forced out of their home during the Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia. She remembers vividly (just as Loung seems to) that time. She told the class heartbreaking stories and spoke about Pol Pot and the genocide of the Cambodian people, so this book held special interest for me.

Recommendation: It is definitely a difficult book to read emotionally. There are some graphic parts that I didn't "enjoy" reading, but even the ugly things in life need to be told and remembered so that (hopefully) they aren't repeated. So please pick up a copy and read this important book.