First They Killed My Father

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers is a 2000 nonfiction book written by a Cambodian author and survivor of the Pol Pot regime Loung Ung. It is a personal account of her experiences during the Khmer Rouge years.

First They Killed My Father
US edition paperback cover
Author	Loung Ung
Cover artist	Loung Ung, Mary Schuck
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	memoir
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	2000
Media type	Print (paperback)
Pages	238 p.
ISBN	ISBN 0-06-093138-8

[edit] Summary

Loung Ung was five years old in Cambodia at the start of the Pol Pot Regime. Her father was a middle-class government worker, and thus a prime target for the Khmer Rouge. Loung, her parents, and her many siblings had to flee their home, setting out with no warning and no destination. They had to leave almost everything behind and pretend to be a farming family to avoid capture, but were eventually sent to a work camp.

After a string of work camps, Loung and her family had almost grown used to the constant hunger and tiredness, the fear of and separation from every other member of their villages, and to hiding their emotions so as to not appear weak. Soon, Loung’s teenaged brothers, Khouy and Meng, and sister, Keav, were sent away to a different work camp. Keav died shortly after her arrival. Then Loung’s father was taken away and killed. Loung’s mother forced Loung, her sister Chou, and her remaining brother Kim to run away, leaving herself and her baby daughter Geak behind. Loung and Chou, too afraid to split up as they had been ordered, arrived at a child work camp where they stayed together until Loung was sent to a different camp to be trained as a child soldier. Soon, Ma and Geak are assumed to be dead, because the soldiers "took them away."

Eventually, Loung, Meng, and Meng's wife Eang escape to Vietnam, then Thailand, then finally to America. Loung's life in America and her eventual return to Cambodia are chronicled in her second book, Lucky Child.