First They Killed My Father

First They Killed My dad: a Daughter of Cambodia Remembers [Taylor L. Bauer]

[Bishop John J. Snyder High School]

First They Killed My Father: a Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Born to an affluent Cambodian father and a Chinese mother, Loung Ung was only five years vintage when the Khmer Rouge raged into her city. Four years later, in one of the bloodiest episodes of the twentieth years, some two million Cambodians—out of a population of seven million—had died at the hands of the infamous Pol vessel and the Khmer Rouge genocide. Among the victims were both Loung's parents, two sisters and twenty other relatives. Today, Loung has made over thirty trips back to Cambodia, and as an scribe, lecturer and activist, she has dedicated twenty years to encouraging equality, human privileges, and fairness in her native land and worldwide. Her memoir, First They slain My Father: a female child of Cambodia Remembers, released by HarperCollins in 2000, is a national bestseller and recipient of the 2001 Asian/Pacific American Librarians' Association accolade for “Excellence in Adult Non-fiction Literature”. (Harper 2008)

According to the story Loung Ung had just turned five when Khmer Rouge troops invaded her hometown of Phnom Penh, forcing her family to flee their homes and abandon their comfortable middle-class life. The first book of UNG, first they killed my father: daughter of Cambodia remembers details of his Experience in the Khmer Rouge from shortly before the invasion of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975 to her departure from the refugee camps in Thailand, the United States in February 1980.

Before 1970, Cambodia was ruled by a monarch, Prince Sihanouk. However, in 1970 he was overthrown by his top General Lon Nol in a military coup. During the next five years of civil war between the democratic Lon Nol government and the Communist Khmer Rouge. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge beaten Lon Nol. Ung begins her story with a note from the author, saying: "From 1975 to 1979 - through execution, starvation, disease and forced labor - the Khmer Rouge systematically killed about two million Cambodians, nearly a quarter of the population." (Harper 2008)

UNG story paints a grim and powerful picture of what it was like to live under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. It is written in matter-of-fact style that is not overly emotional yet expresses deep emotional distress that she experienced. Her story is especially touching because it is said, from the perspective of a child who, despite her age was a remarkable insight and a powerful imagination and strong will to survive.

Ung is the second youngest of seven children, and often feels understood everything, except her father, with whom she has a very close relationship, which is seen throughout its history. Pol Pot regime was a move to "purge" of Cambodia from all foreign influences and ideals, and more or less turn into a communist society, the family Loung had to change into a peasant family, because anyone who has worked on the ...