First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung


Overview


About the Author


Using it in the Classroom


Essential Questions


Links


Overview

First They Killed My Father is an autobiographical account of a family's tragic experiences in a civil war torn Cambodia through the eyes of a young child. Set in the mid to late nineteen-seventies, this book paints a vivid picture of a country under the rule of the followers of a totalitarian party called the Khmer Rouge and a family trying desperately to stay together and stay alive. Loung Ung is five years at the start of the book and as the sixth in a line of seven children that includes three older brother, two older sisters, and one sister who is two years younger. She is an active and inquisitive girl who is adored in particular by her doting father. However, her simple and comfortable life is altered forever when the Cambodia is taken over by a communist leader, Pol Pot who believes in a rural society. Like the rest of the families living in urban communities, Loung's is forced one day with no warning to move from the city of Phenom Penh with only a few belongings to work on a farm. The Ung's case is different because of her father's former job with the military police and the family's relative wealth. To avoid being executed as a possible threat or source of power her father, Sem Im, poses as a farmer, starting their new lives, lying and relocating from camp to camp for survival.

During the first few years after the evacuation, Loung's two eldest brothers, Meng and Khouy and her oldest sister Keav are separated from the family and taken to other camps to continue work. Keav is the first of her immediate family to die, succumbing to food poisoning. Her father is taken away in the night by soldiers and is assumed to have been murdered. Hoping for a better life beyond surviving on stolen food and constant fear of execution or disappearance for her children, Loung's mother Ay keeps the baby Geak (both of whom were also taken by soldiers and supposedly murdered the following year) with her but instructs Loung, her brother Kim, and sister Chou to pretend to be orphans so they will be sent to live in a children's only camp. Kim takes his own route separate from his sisters soon after, and while the girls are kept together briefly, Loung is on her own by the age of seven after being chosen to become a child soldier.

During the next two years as the Vietnamese invade Cambodia, Loung is reunited first with Kim and Chou, and then Meng and Kouy in a refugee camp called Pursat CIty, and eventually end up with an uncle. Still hoping to escape the turbulent life in Cambodia Loung's oldest brother, now married to a Chinese girl named Eang, searches for a way to Thailand. His wife's family, in Vietnam allow the couple to visit them and upon his second trip to the country, Meng brings Loung with him. The three of them journey from Vietnam to a refugee camp in Thailand and eventually are brought to the United States.



About the Author
Loung Ung was born in 1970 to a Chinese mother and a half Chinese, half Cambodian father who worked with the military police in Cambodia. She is known for her escape from her homeland during the brutal genocide that was the result of communist leader Pol Pot's vision of recreating the country as an agricultural one through slave labor, forced relocation of homes and families, and neglect of medical care, education, and basic life needs and rights. Surviving the deaths of both of her parents and two of her sisters, the separation from all of her siblings at the age of seven, and the eventual abandonment of three of her reunited siblings in hopes for a better life with her eldest brother and sister-in-law, Ung's early life was marred with the horrors of war. Her journey from a life of affluence through work camp laborer and child soldier to refugee is documented in her book First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. Ung's second book, Lucky Girl: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites With the Sister She Left Behind picks up where its predecessor left off documenting her life in the United States and her sister Chou's life back in Cambodia.

Ung was educated first in the US and after high school in Canada where she attended Saint Michael's College. She struggled with depression and attempted suicide before beginning to put her memories and feelings down in her memoir at age sixteen. She reconnected with bother her brother Kim, who had escaped Cambodia five years after she had and with her sisters Chou and Khouy who had stayed behind. Ung is a member of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, a spokesperson for the Campaign for a Land-mine Free World, a bestselling author, a human and women-rights activist, and an inductee to the Saint Michael's Alumnae Academic Hall of Fame. Though she lives with her husband in Ohio, she owns several acres of land in Cambodia near her sister Chou's home. Her first book, First They Killed My Father, which has been translated into at least twelve languages, won the Asian/Pacific American Librarians’ Association award for "Excellence in Adult Non-fiction Literature."

Loung Ung's Official Site

Using it in the Classroom



As this subject matter will likely be unfamiliar to students, I would first give the class an anticipatory guide that would include a map of the area so that they would know where Cambodia is in the world and where Thailand and Vietnam are in comparison, pictures from the time period from Cambodia to show the look of the homes, the clothing, and styles before the take over of Pol Pot, and a brief overview of what was going on in history at that time in the world.

I would also give them a list of vocabulary words that they will come across in the book so that they are already familiar with the terms and/or concepts as they read. This is an example of possible vocabulary words:

capitalist
dysentery
Communism
evacuation
malnutrition
dictatorship
infiltrate
ethnic cleansing
omnipotent
dissent
agrarian
propaganda

As we read I would ask the class to tie any concepts they see into other units we have studied. One example is the idea of obtaining a utopian society and at what price that struggle comes with. In this case it is the stripping away of identity (as in The Giver), the brutal "reeducation" of those in opposition (as in 1984), and the idea that some are better than others (like in Animal Farm).

A few possible research projects could be on "the killing fields" from a historical perspective and how it relates to other episodes of genocide, or ask the students to look into the causes that Loung herself supports such as a Landmine Free World, the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center, or PEPY.

In the case of this book, there is current media to tie in to the text as the author has video taped lectures. I would show the two videos above and also this lecture place below. Though some of the images shown in the videos may be disturbing I think it's important they students, depending on the age range, should have the visual representation of what happens when people are not treated with basic human rights.




Essential Questions

1. Thinking of the quote: "Keav and now Pa, one by one Khmer Rouge is killing my family (page 107)," why do you believe that the book is called First They Killed My Father, when the first member of Loung's family to die is her sister, Keav?

2. How does her father help her survive even after his death?

3. What role does identity play in this book? After being stripped of their former lives and forced to live so many lies over the years, does the new identity become the true one? Give examples to support your answer.

4. The emotion of hate comes up many times throughout the book. While, Loung is at first confused at the idea that others could hate her, she eventually becomes overwhelmed and fueled by hate herself. It is the actions that she takes in the name of hatred that labels her as strong enough to be a warrior. Is her hate truly her source of strength or is there something else that allows her to survive?

5. "Walking away, I break my farewell rule and look to see Ma, Chou, and Geak crying and standing in the doorway (pg 157)" Why does Loung, and other family members (Pa, Kim) adhere to this unspoken rule to walk away and not look back?


Links

Harper Collins Reading Guide
Loung Ung's Official Site
Veterans For America: Landmine Free World
Veterans International Cambodia
Cambodian Women's Crisis Center
PEPY