Loung Ung

Personal Growth in a War-Torn Country Being a person in a war-torn country can disrupt one person's lifestyle, especially if it is a young child. In the case of Loung Ung, she had to face the realities of being in a war-conflicted nation of Cambodia her whole childhood. Throughout her memoir, First They Killed My Father, Loung Ung tells the experience firsthand about what she went through during a time of conflict in her home country. This experience has taught…...

Pol Pot’s Utopia "Hunger and death have numbed our spirits, it's as if we have lost all our energy for life" (Ung 100). In Loung Ung's memoir First They Killed My Father, the atrocities of the Cambodian genocide are experienced through the eyes of a child. Loung, at a mere six years old, lost half of her family to a genocide that slaughtered two million Cambodians within four years. As the Khmer Rouge came into power, they forced urban intellectual…...

Loung Ung was five-years-old when she experienced a terrifying story. When she had grown, she decided to write the book “First They Killed My Father.” This story exemplifies how a young five-year-old girl has a great life being middle class, living in a pretty big and decent apartment and having a loving family. She enters an unimaginable situation of people not liking her dad and trying to hurt him, which she does not understand. Her family packed up and went…...

In this semester, we read many incredible survival stories of the youths under disastrous historical crisis. These characters, we read about, went through enormous of hardships and fears; but with courage and determination, many of them survived and lived on. However, in many cases, these characters did not begin their lives in miseries. Many of them, in fact, were born in the comfort of wealth and privilege. In this essay, I will discuss four wealthy families, which we read, and…...

The book First They Killed My Father, was based on Cambodians. In Cambodian culture, it’s typical for Cambodians to politely greet each other with a Sampeah. A Sampeah includes squeezing the palms together before the chest with a slight bow and welcome with a pleasant 'Chumreap Suor'. Usually, the higher the hands are held, and the lower the bow is, the more regard is passed on. Rather in my Hispanic culture, it is polite to greet another person by a…...

In the heart wrenching memoir by Loung Ung First They Killed My Father is her personal in-depth depiction as a child during civil war in Cambodia from 1975-1979. Loung Ung and her family was one small part of the Cambodian tragedy. This is her memoir of that time, and the years which follows. Showing how her experiences that forever impact her on the journey to coming of age. The journey starts with her change in class and wealth. Loung, as…...