First They Killed My Father
by Loung Ung
List Price: $13.00
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0060931388
Publisher: HarperCollins
Until the age of five, Loung 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. When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in
April 1975, Ung's family was forced to flee their home and hide their
previous life of privilege. Eventually, they dispersed in order to survive.
Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans while
her other siblings were sent to labor camps. Only after the Vietnamese
destroyed the Khmer Rouge were Loung and her surviving siblings slowly
reunited.
Bolstered by the shocking bravery
of one brother and sustained by her sister's gentle kindness amid brutality,
Loung forged ahead to create a courageous new life. Harrowing yet hopeful,
insightful and compelling, this family's story is truly unforgettable.
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1. What fundamental problems existed in the Khmer Rouge's plan that caused the destruction of so many lives? Were there any values that the Khmer Rouge claimed to hold that you share?
2. What impact did the narrator's child's voice have on your experience as a reader? How would you characterize the transformation that takes place in her narrative voice throughout the story?
3. How did it affect your reading of the book that you were aware of Loung's father's impending death long before her?
4. Would you describe Loung as a feminist? How did the experiences of the Ung family differ during the war because of gender?
5. What was your impression of the final separation, both geographic and cultural, that Loung had with her surviving family? Did you sympathize with her eventual desire to assimilate into American culture, or had you expected her to be more aggressive about pursuing her family relationships earlier on?
6. Loung saw herself as a "strong" person, as did many other people in the book, and was eventually drafted into a soldier training camp as a result. What are the qualities of a survivor? How does one reconcile compassion with a will to survive? What qualities enabled her gentle sister Chou to survive as well?
7. With armed struggle a reality of life for people all over the world both past and present, how does one draw the line as to which means are ethical and unethical for coping with it, such as the author's current campaign against the use of landmines? Are there other tools of war that you believe should be broadly banned?
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"A harrowing true story of the nightmare world that was Cambodia in those terrible times of mass murder and slow death through overwork, starvation, and disease. "
—Kirkus Reviews
"[Ung] tells her stories straightforwardly, vividly, and without any strenuous effort to explicate their importance, allowing the stories themselves to create their own impact. "
—The New York Times
