And the award goes to…books! At least, it does in our world. But if you’re a film fan and looking to broaden your literary horizons, here are two dozen books to read now that awards season is over (and you’re probably tired of movies).
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
238First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
238Hardcover
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Overview
From a childhood survivor of Cambodia's brutal Pol Pot regime comes an unforgettable narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.
Until the age of five, Lounge Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. She was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights, and sassing her parents. While her beautiful mother worried that Loung was a troublemaker--that she stomped around like a thirsty cow--her beloved father knew Lounge was a clever girl.
When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung's family fled their home and moved from village to village to hide their identity, their education, their former life of privilege. Eventually, the family dispersed in order to survive.
Because Lounge was resilient and determined, she was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, while other siblings were sent to labor camps. As the Vietnamese penetrated Cambodia, destroying the Khmer Rouge, Loung and her surviving siblings were slowly reunited.
Bolstered by the shocking bravery of one brother, the vision of the others--and sustained be her sister's gentle kindness amid brutality--Loung forged on to create for herself a courageous new life.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780756984823 |
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Publisher: | Perfection Learning Corporation |
Publication date: | 03/01/2008 |
Series: | P. S. Series |
Pages: | 238 |
Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.90(d) |
Age Range: | 14 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
phnom penh
April 1975Phnom Penh city wakes early to take advantage of the cool morning breeze before the sun breaks through the haze and invades the country with sweltering heat. Already at 6 A.M. people in Phnom Penh are rushing and bumping into each other on dusty, narrow side streets. Waiters and waitresses in black-and-white uniforms swing open shop doors as the aroma of noodle soup greets waiting customers. Street vendors push food carts piled with steamed dumplings, smoked beef teriyaki sticks, and roasted peanuts along the sidewalks and begin to set up for another day of business. Children in colorful T-shirts and shorts kick soccer balls on sidewalks with their bare feet, ignoring the grunts and screams of the food cart owners. The wide boulevards sing with the buzz of motorcycle engines, squeaky bicycles, and, for those wealthy enough to afford them, small cars. By midday, as temperatures climb to over a hundred degrees, the streets grow quiet again. People rush home to seek relief from the heat, have lunch, take cold showers, and nap before returning to work at 2 P.M.
My family lives on a third-floor apartment in the middle of Phnom Penh, so I am used to the traffic and the noise. We don't have traffic lights on our streets; instead, policemen stand on raised metal boxes, in the middle of the intersections directing traffic. Yet the city always seems to be one big traffic jam. My favorite way to get around with Ma is the cyclo because the driver can maneuver it in the heaviest traffic. A cyclo resembles a big wheelchair attached to the front of a bicycle. You just take a seat and pay the driver to wheel you around whereveryou want to go. Even though we own two cars and a truck, when Ma takes me to the market we often go in a cyclo because we get to our destination faster. Sitting on her lap I bounce and laugh as the driver pedals through the congested city streets.
This morning, I am stuck at a noodle shop a block from our apartment in this big chair. I'd much rather be playing hopscotch with my friends. Big chairs always make me want to jump on them. I hate the way my feet just hang in the air and dangle. Today, Ma has already warned me twice not to climb and stand on the chair. I settle for simply swinging my legs back and forth beneath the table.
Ma and Pa enjoy taking us to a noodle shop in the morning before Pa goes off to work. As usual, the place is filled with people having breakfast. The clang and clatter of spoons against the bottom of bowls, the slurping of hot tea and soup, the smell of garlic, cilantro, ginger, and beef broth in the air make my stomach rumble with hunger. Across from us, a man uses chopsticks to shovel noodles into his mouth. Next to him, a girl dips a piece of chicken into a small saucer of hoisin sauce while her mother cleans her teeth with a toothpick. Noodle soup is a traditional breakfast for Cambodians and Chinese. We usually have this, or for a special treat, French bread with iced coffee.
"Sit still," Ma says as she reaches down to stop my leg midswing, but I end up kicking her hand. Ma gives me a stern look and a swift slap on my leg.
"Don't you ever sit still? You are five years old. You are the most troublesome child. Why can't you be like your sisters? How Will you ever grow up to be a proper young lady?" Ma sighs. Of course I have heard all this before.
It must be hard for her to have a daughter who does not act like a girl, to be so beautiful and have a daughter like me. Among her women friends, Ma is admired for her height, slender build, and porcelain white skin. I often overhear them talking about her beautiful face when they think she cannot hear. Because I'm a child, they feel free to say whatever they want in front of me, believing I cannot understand. So while they're ignoring me, they comment on her perfectly arched eyebrows; almond-shaped eyes; tall, straight Western nose; and oval face. At 5'6", Ma is an amazon among Cambodian women. Ma says she's so tall because she's all Chinese. She says that some day my Chinese side will also make me tall. I hope so, because now when I stand I'm only as tall as Ma's hips.
"Princess Monineath of Cambodia, now she is famous for being proper," Ma continues. "It is said that she walks so quietly that no one ever hears her approaching. She smiles without ever showing her teeth. She talks to men without looking directly in their eyes. What a gracious lady she is." Ma looks at me and shakes her head.
"Hmm..." is my reply, taking a loud swig of Coca-Cola from the small bottle.
Ma says I stomp around like a cow dying of thirst. She's tried many times to teach me the proper way for a young lady to walk. First, you connect your heel to the ground, then roll the ball of your feet on the earth while your toes curl up painfully. Finally you end up with your toes gently pushing you off the ground. All this is supposed to be done gracefully, naturally, and quietly. It all sounds too complicated and painful to me. Besides, I am happy stomping around.
"The kind of trouble she gets into, while just the other day she-" Ma continues to Pa. but is interrupted when our waitress arrives with our soup.
"Phnom Penh special noodles with chicken for you and a glass of hot water," says the waitress as she puts the steaming bowl of translucent potato noodles swimming in clear broth before Ma.
Table of Contents
Author's Note | ix | |
Phnom Penh April 1975 | 1 | |
The Ung Family April 1975 | 7 | |
Takeover April 17, 1975 | 17 | |
Evacuation April 1975 | 23 | |
Seven-Day Walk April 1975 | 28 | |
Krang Truop April 1975 | 38 | |
Waiting Station July 1975 | 44 | |
Anlungthmor July 1975 | 50 | |
Ro Leap November 1975 | 56 | |
Labor Camps January 1976 | 69 | |
New Year's April 1976 | 79 | |
Keav August 1976 | 93 | |
Pa December 1976 | 101 | |
Ma's Little Monkey April 1977 | 113 | |
Leaving Home May 1977 | 120 | |
Child Soldiers August 1977 | 129 | |
Gold for Chicken November 1977 | 144 | |
The Last Gathering May 1978 | 151 | |
The Walls Crumble November 1978 | 158 | |
The Youn Invasion January 1979 | 165 | |
The First Foster Family January 1979 | 175 | |
Flying Bullets February 1979 | 184 | |
Khmer Rouge Attack February 1979 | 195 | |
The Execution March 1979 | 203 | |
Back to Bat Deng April 1979 | 209 | |
From Cambodia to Vietnam October 1979 | 218 | |
Lam Sing Refugee Camp February 1980 | 228 | |
Epilogue | 235 | |
Acknowledgments | 239 | |
Resources | 241 |
What People are Saying About This
In this gripping narrative, Loung Ung describes the unfathomable evil that engulfed Cambodia during her childhood, the courage that enabled her to survive, and the determination that has made her an eloquent voice for peace and justice in Cambodia. It is a tour-de-force that strengthened our resolve to prevent and punish crimes against humanity.
U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, Congressional Leader on Human Rights and a Global Ban on Land Mines
Dith Tran, whose work and life is portrayed in the award winning movie, The Killing Fields
Loung has written an eloquent and powerful narrative as a young witness to the Khmer Rouge atrocities. This is an important story that will have a dramatic impact on today's readers and inform generations to come.
This is a story of triumph of a child's interminable spirit over the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge over a culture where children are trained to become killing machines. Loung's subsequent campaign against land mines is a result of witnessing first hand how her famished neighbors, after dodging soldier's bullets, risked their lives to traverse unmapped mine fields in search of food. Despite the heartache, I could not put the book down until I reached the end. Meeting Loung in person made me reaffirm my admiration for her.
This is a harrowing, compelling story. Evoking a child's voice and
viewpoint, Ung has written a book filled with vivid and unforgettable
details. I lost a night's sleep to this book because I literally could not
put it down, and even when I finally did, I lost another night's sleep just
from the sheer, echoing power of it.
(Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face)
Despite the tragedy all around her, this scrappy kid struggles for life and beats the odds. I thought young Ung's would make me sad, but this funky child warrior carried me with her in her courageous quest for life. Reading these pages has strengthened me in my own struggle to disarm the powers of violence in this world.
Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
"Ung's memoir should serve as a reminder that some history is best not left just to historians but to those left standing when the terror ends." -Booklist Starred Review
Reading Group Guide
Plot Summary
First They Killed My Father is a heart-wrenching and often difficult historical autobiography that recounts the brutality of war with vivid detail. A story of political oppression in Cambodia, it is all the more striking and intense as it is told from the perspective of a child, one who is thrust into situations that she doesn't understand, as she is only five years old when the terror begins. Loung Ung made many difficult journeys during her Cambodian youth, starting with being evacuated from her hometown of Phnom Penh. More meaningful were the journeys of self, which led her from a life as the child of a large and privileged family to that of an orphan and work camp laborer. From the deaths of her parents and sisters, we get a glimpse of the power that family relationships have in our lives. From the loss of economic status, the ways in which our social class can define our days is drawn in sharper relief. From her growing knowledge of the regime that has caused her to suffer, we learn of the vast gulf that often exists between a government's intentions and its actions, between words and deeds.
Ung's story offers an account of the warping effects that war can have on an individual, as well as of the possibility of survival and triumph through seemingly insurmountable adversity. We learn of the daily difficulties that come with an atmosphere of political instability-how neighbors cannot trust one another, how common people become executioners, how a political regime can value the acquisition of weapons before feeding its own people, and the tragedy that necessarily follows. The result is a book of incredible power which demonstrates more than thewill to survive of a small child, more than the forces in her life that sustained her through feelings of rage, love, and guilt to a life of activism against global forces of violence. A history of war that may not be on many American's radar screens, Ung's recollections are a chilling testament to what happens when a political movement becomes invulnerable to reason in its quest for power, and also of the ability of the human spirit to endure the harshest conditions.
Questions for Discussion