“In my heart I know the truth, but my mind cannot accept the reality of what this all means.” - Loung Ung
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung details Ung’s life from when she was about five to eight years old, when she experienced the Khmer Rouge. Coming from a well-off family of a military officer, Ung lived peacefully until the soldiers took over. Led under the leader Pol Pot to return Cambodia into a agricultural and rural-centered state, it took the lives of millions of people, including Ung’s family members. Overcoming lack of decent food and the threat of dying, Loung Ung worked on farms and trained as a child soldier as a young child while losing many of her family members to the atrocities around her. It is a story of perseverance when all the conditions around you are destined for destruction.
When I first picked up First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, I didn’t think much of it beyond the shocking title. I thought it was fictional and more of a story of loss by unnamed people. But opening the book and reading it, my perspective opened to a new light. I had never heard of the Khmer Rouge and the atrocities behind it because it never appeared in our history textbooks. And the worst part was that the story was a memoir and that all the experiences detailed were true.
The book provided me with an insight into the atrocities that occurred in the Khmer Rouge and it also changed my perspective on how I view other countries’ histories. If the Khmer Rouge happened and destroyed the lives of millions in Cambodia, how many similar events that I don’t know about that hurt so many people happened on this Earth? And if this personal story was so tragically impactful on one person, what would the collective experiences of these people amount to? These questions rang in my head after closing the book and it seemed that no one could truly answer them.
I would recommend this book for more mature audiences who want to see and learn about the Khmer Rouge on a personal level. It does cover some very heavy topics, so I note that readers should not consider a light read.
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