Loung Ung: Activist, Author, Lecturer
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

-- Confucious

Luck Child (2005)
First They Killed My Father (2001)

Dedication

This site is dedicated to the Khmer people for theirs are not only the voices of war, but testimonies of love, family, beauty, humor, strength, and courage. For all the above reasons and more, Cambodia will always be in my heart and soul. -- Loung Ung

Lucky Child

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
*Starred Review* In her second memoir, Ung picks up where her first, the National Book Award–winning First They Killed My Father, left off, with the author escaping a devastated Cambodia in 1980 at age 10 and flying to her new home in Vermont. Though she embraces her American life—which carries advantages ranging from having a closet of her own to getting a formal education and enjoying The Brady Bunch—she can never truly leave her Cambodian life behind. She and her eldest brother, with whom she escaped, left behind their three other siblings. This book is alternately heart-wrenching and heartwarming, as it follows the parallel lives of Loung Ung and her closest sister, Chou, during the 15 years it took for them to reunite. Loung effectively juxtaposes chapters about herself and her sister to show their different worlds: while the author's meals in America are initially paid for with food stamps, Chou worries about whether she'll be able to scrounge enough rice; Loung is haunted by flashbacks, but Chou is still dodging the Khmer Rouge; and while Loung's biggest concern is fitting in at school, Chou struggles daily to stay alive. Loung's first-person chapters are the strongest, replete with detailed memories as a child who knows she is the lucky one and can't shake the guilt or horror. "For no matter how seemingly great my life is in America... it will not be fulfilling if I live it alone.... [L]iving life to the fullest involves living it with your family."
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Ung's autobiographical First They Killed My Father, 2000) chronicled her harrowing childhood under Pol Pot's genocidal regime, which claimed the lives of her mother, father, and two sisters. In an essential companion timed for release on the thirtieth anniversary of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge takeover, Ung unflinchingly continues her memoir with her arrival in Vermont alongside her sister-in-law and brother, who, able to "borrow enough gold to take only one of his siblings with him," chose his tough youngest sister as the "lucky child." Ung agonized over everyone she left behind, but especially regretted her 15-year separation from her last surviving sister, Chou. Here she tells their parallel life stories, effectively interleaving her own narrative of an '80s, valley-girl adolescence (laced with posttraumatic episodes) with chapters about Chou's growth to adulthood amid threats of land mines and Khmer Rouge raids. By daringly (and remarkably successfully) assuming her sister's point of view, Ung brings third- and first-world disparities into discomfiting focus and gracefully dramatizes the metaphorical joining together of her haunted past with her current identity as a privileged Cambodian American. When the narratives fuse at the sisters' long-awaited reunion, their clasping of hands throws wide the floodgates to tamped-down memories--a cathartic release that readers will tearfully, gratefully share. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description  In this lyrical sequel to her bestselling, critically acclaimed memoir First They Killed My Father, Loung Ung describes her school years in Vermont as a Cambodian refugee and, in alternating chapters, give voice to her sister’s experience as a genocide survivor left behind in rural Cambodia.

Following years of hunger, loss, and violence at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Loung begins anew in America, opening her story on her first day in Vermont in June 1980. She chronicles her triumphant and heartbreaking history through the obstacles of assimilation as a refugee in the United States, surmounting dogged memories of the genocide and the deep scars of war, grasping for equilibrium and the strength to take on a new life in a peace-loving place where violence is not the norm.

Stunning for her bravery and perseverance, Loung is an accomplished activist and writer, vibrant and healthy despite her experience of genocide and war. In this book, she struggles to uphold her family’s honor though she was forced to leave them in order to survive. As much Loung’s personal story as that of a war-torn family and nation, Lucky Child is a meditation on what might have been. This striking parallel of Loung’s life in America with her sister Chou’s life in postwar Cambodia highlights the harsh realities of chance and circumstances, both on personal level for the Ung family and on a national level for all Cambodians.

Having visited Cambodia over twenty times since her initial departure, Loung concludes her memoir with the first reunion of the Ung family’s surviving siblings in their homeland in 1995. Redemptive and searing, Lucky Child is every bit as inspiring as First They Killed My Father.

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First They Killed My Father

From a childhood survivor of Cambodia’s Pol Pot regime comes a riveting narrative of war, desperate actions, and the unnerving strength of a child and her family.

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 storme3d 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 campo 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.

In her own words--Loung’s explanation

When I wrote First They Killed My Father in 1998, I was still at the beginning stage of my reconnection to my sister and Cambodia.  Then, the political situations in Cambodia was still unstable, poverty and diseases widespread, and the scars of war were still very raw due to continuing battles and existence of the Khmer Rouge in the country.  I was an angry child when I wrote First.  A child who wanted to purge the war from her body and threw it in the face of readers, decisions makers, and people she thought should’ve heard her cries but didn’t.  The angry child didn’t want readers to have an easy read because I didn’t have an easy life.  In First, I plunged readers into the depths of man’s inhumanity of man—and left the readers there. 

Since First’s publication in April of 2000, through my activism and work, support my readers, my trips back to Cambodia, and my family, I have let go of a lot of the anger.  In First, I told stories of how my family and I survived the war, with Lucky Child, I wanted to share with readers how we survived the peace.  First was about getting lost, being lost, and losing—Lucky is about being found, finding, and gaining.   In Lucky Child, I wanted to let the world know that long after the guns have fallen silent, for survivors the war is never over.  It wasn’t over for Chou in Cambodia who had to survive Khmer Rouge raids and poverty, it wasn’t over for me as the war raged on in my mind even as I lived in a peaceful land. 

In 1979 I left Cambodia, and my family to make my way to America with my brother Meng and his wife Eang.  As we stood in a middle of Bat Deng’s red dusty village to say our goodbyes, my sister Chou and I held hands in silence.  I was ten and she was twelve.  Though we were still children, our hearts were grown and bonded through the deaths of my sisters, parents and war.  We were more than sisters; we were each other’s best friends, protectors, providers, and kindred spirits. 

As Meng peddled us away on his bicycle, breaking Chou’s hold of my hand, I turned my back to her.  I knew she would not leave until we were out of her sight.  My last image of Bat Deng was of Chou, her lips quivering and her face crumpled as tears streamed down her cheeks.  Her face stayed with me all through the trip to my new world.  I swore I would return in five years to see her. 

            It would be fifteen years before I was reunited with my sister again in 1995.  Fifteen years of her living in a squalid village with no electricity or running water.  Fifteen years of me in the U.S. living the American dream.  It is my obsession with these fifteen years that has led me to return to Cambodia over twenty times, spending months at a time with Chou in her village. 

Although Chou and I are very close today, I was not certain that we would ever reach this place when we met again in 1995.  At that first meeting, I felt guilty for having lived ‘an easy life’ in America while she continued to suffer.  I was ashamed of the way I tried to erase her from my mind and heart.  I knew that if Meng had picked Chou instead of me to come to America, she would never have left me behind.  She would have written, sent me dresses and stuff, and worried about me everyday.   I never wrote, never sent her a thing, and was fairly successful in cutting her out of my thoughts and life.   

As I sat across from her, the memories of the war were overwhelming and scary because she was there with me.  I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t in the war, or erase my mind of it because she was there.  I wondered if Chou could ever forgive me for leaving her, if I could let go of my guilt for abandoning her, or if we could ever have a relationship beyond the war.  I wondered if we could ever spend time together without the presence of guilt, shame, hurt, and pain.  

Over the years, Chou and I have spent many hours talking and sharing our lives with one another.  I did not know then that our ‘talks’ would be eventually turned into ‘interviews’ and later, another book.   I just wanted to reconnect with my sister, my best friend, and my kindred spirit.  I know Chou felt the same way.   Today, I feel blessed and fortunate to have that connection with my sister again.   

It is also important for me to write Lucky Child as another testament to my family’s love story, and my love story with humanity.  For even as I have witnessed man’s worst inhumanity to man, in my life I have also seen the very best of man’s humanity to man. 

In our trouble times, I often reminded that twenty-five years ago, I was living on the streets of a Cambodian village, eating out of garbage cans, hating the world, and wondering why the world hated me.  Had somebody told me that someday I would be a healthy, happy, and peaceful person-I would not have dared to dream it. 

I know that alive, as a peaceful citizen and not a prostitute or killer because so many went out of their way and comfort zones to find me, to reach out to me, and to extend a helping hand.  It may have been a kind word spoken to me as a child or morsel of food that sustained me for one more day.  Or... it may have been the countless people who presented me with daily opportunities to make a life worth living.  All of their efforts, actions, kindness, encouragement, and support gave my family and me the chance to go beyond surviving war to thriving in peace.

                                                                                                --- Loung Ung