First They Killed My Father

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. While her beautiful mother worried that Loung was a troublemaker, her beloved father knew Loung was a clever girl.

When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army captured 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 Loung was resilient and determined, she trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans while other siblings were sent to labor camps. As the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge, the surviving siblings were slowly reunited. Bolstered by the shocking bravery of one brother, the vision of the others and sustained by her sister's gentle kindness amid brutality, Loung forged herself a new life.[1]

The book was harshly criticized by Sody Lay, co-founder of the Khmer Institute Website, for historical inaccuracies and cultural inauthenticity. Reflecting on this negative review in an article for The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Dr. Bunkong Tuon acknowledged the criticisms of Sody Lay's review, but defended Ung's work. Instead of dismissing Ung's text outright, the article argued that scholars should read First They Killed My Father not to garner historical facts about the Khmer Rouge, but rather to experience its emotional truth and to consider its subjective, narrative gaps and fissures as a signifier of trauma and a testament to the destruction perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.[2]

The book has been adapted into a movie that was produced and directed by Angelina Jolie. The film premiered on February 18, 2017 in Siem Reap, Cambodia.[3]

"The heart of it is Loung's story", Jolie states on the film. "It's the story of a war through the eyes of a child, but it is also the story of a country". To construct an accurate portrait of the genocide and war, Jolie used only Cambodian actors who speak their native language, Khmer. She gathered hundreds of survivors and their children to re-create their stories. The movie was filmed in Cambodia.

• Booknotes interview with Ung on First They Killed My Father, March 19, 2000, C-SPAN
• Presentation by Loung Ung on First They Killed My Father, June 13, 2000, C-SPAN
• First They Killed My Father on Netflix
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