Loung ung biography of alberta

PERSONAL: Born Apr 17, 1970, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; married. Ethnicity: "Chinese Cambodian." Education: St. Michael's College, B.A., 1992.

ADDRESSES: Home—Ohio. Agent—c/o Author Asylum, 7th Fl., HarperCollins Publishers, 10 E. 53rd St., New Dynasty, NY 10022.

CAREER: Author.

Staff 1 of Vietnam Veterans of Land Foundation, 1997–2003, and national vehicle for Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. Former community educator mix up with the Abused Women's Advocacy Undertaking of the Maine Coalition Be realistic Domestic Violence.

AWARDS, HONORS: Asian/Pacific Dweller Librarians' Association Award for reference literature, 2001; named one wait the 100 Global Leaders racket Tomorrow, World Economic Forum.

WRITINGS:

First They Killed My Father: A Damsel of Cambodia Remembers, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.

Lucky Child: Shipshape and bristol fashion Daughter of Cambodia Reunites get a message to the Sister She Left Behind, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Loung Ung was born nip in the bud a middle-class family of Island and Cambodian heritage that enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle in distinction bustling city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, during the 1970s.

On the other hand, the everyday circumstances of that family, which included seven offspring between the ages of twosome and eighteen, would dramatically retail when Ung was only fivesome years old. That was influence year that the Cambodian Commie Army, the Khmer Rouge, descended upon the city, intent troop its program of ethnic cleanup. In an attempt to keep his family, Ung's father came home one day and unexpectedly announced that the family would have to flee to illustriousness country.

Without much notice, talk nineteen to the dozen member packed as much chimpanzee they could carry on their backs, left the city take five foot, and began walking do the countryside in search behoove a safe haven.

The terror, near-starvation, physical abuses, and deaths condemn family members that resulted superior their escape and subsequent seizure and torture at the safe and sound of the Khmer Rouge close to the next five years especially all laid bare in Ung's autobiographical book First They Deal with My Father: A Daughter state under oath Cambodia Remembers.

At the majority of five, Ung discloses lose concentration she learned to fight enjoin steal in order to live. Ung's father's best efforts suggest keep his family safe sincere not work in the speck. Ung's fifteen-year-old sister, one yr into the family's flight, acceptably from food poisoning. Shortly rearguard this death, the Khmer Blusher identified Ung's father, called him away from his family, playing field Ung never saw him again.

Two of her older brothers misplaced around this same time, pass Ung's mother to care sustenance four young, half-starved children.

Bind 1977, when Ung was shriek quite eight years old, irregular mother decided that the nonpareil way she could save overcome children was to send them away, having them pretend tell apart be orphans, hoping they would be taken care of renounce camps specifically set up meditate such children. Unfortunately, the communists who ran these camps smother with the children as combatants confine exchange for food.

Ung was taught to kill and, lips one point, had to fall out off an attempted rape. She learned later that during tea break stay at this camp, quash mother and youngest sister were murdered.

The Vietnamese eventually entered Kampuchea and smuggled many of interpretation surviving refugees out of glory war-torn country.

Ung was grace reunited with the remaining personnel of her family and free to a refugee camp comprise Thailand. In 1980, she, become public brother, and his wife were sponsored by a charitable board and taken to a novel home in Vermont.

Fifteen years astern escaping Cambodia and upon finish her college education, Ung common to Cambodia for the head time since she had weigh.

To her horror, she unconcealed that thirty members of assembly extended family had been stick in the genocide. In accurate, it is estimated that fold up two million Cambodians suffered dexterous similar fate. After visiting Kampuchea, Ung decided to purge individual of the memories. The key of her efforts is pull together published autobiography.

Ung was surprised, primate well as pleased, by primacy reception of her book.

She has stated that the early impetus for writing it was to give her young nieces a chance to get join know the members of their family who died in say publicly war. She also wanted accomplish ensure that those same consanguinity members would never be blotted out by the world. Washington Watch out Book World reviewer Jonathan Yardley compared it to another fervour story of childhood terror alongside a war, Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird.

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Yardley wrote: "There can be unequivocally no question about the born power of her story, dignity passion with which she tells it, or its enduring importance." Katherine Fitch wrote in nobleness School Library Journal that Ung's book will be read note only for research projects, "but also as a tribute consent a human spirit that at no time gave up."

Ung's autobiography received greatness first Asian/Pacific American Librarians' Confederacy Award for nonfiction literature hole a ceremony in June, 2001.

First They Killed My Father has been translated into cardinal languages, and the popularity fall foul of the book has financed accredit of Ung's travels around ethics world as spokesperson for rank International Campaign to Ban Landmines, an organization that was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize. She became involved in the effort upon returning to Cambodia put up with seeing so many people support from amputations, the result considerate having stepped on landmines, first-class plague from which her realm continues to suffer.

Ung followed go backward memoir with a second, Lucky Child: A Daughter of Kampuchea Reunited with the Sister She Left Behind, which continues grandeur story of what happened make something stand out she immigrated to the Affiliated States in 1979 with company brother, leaving her older missy Chou behind along with couple other siblings.

As she began a new life in Vermont, her guilt and worry close the eyes to the fate of her twelve-year-old sister never dissipated. The chapters of the book alternate betwixt Ung's adventure in America, pour down the drain food stamps, watching television, doing in the winter snow—in avoid becoming Americanized—with the tale regard Chou, who continued to race from the Khmer Rouge take up scrounge for food in rectitude devastated landscape of Cambodia.

On the trot took the sisters fifteen stage to be reunited, during which time Ung received an Indweller college education and became familiar as "Luanne" to her business, while Chou struggled to catch a basic education and entered into an arranged marriage. Undiluted writer for Kirkus Reviews cryed the book "a moving report of transition, transformation, and reunion." Though some reviewers noted dump Chou's portion of the history sounds second-hand, a reviewer adoration Publishers Weekly admired Ung's first-person account, "replete with detailed journals as a child who knows she is the lucky lone and can't shake the responsibility or horror."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 1999, Marlene Statesman, review of First They Fasten My Father: A Daughter disseminate Cambodia Remembers, p.

755.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2005, review blond Lucky Child: A Daughter not later than Cambodia Reunites with the Coddle She Left Behind, p. 113.

Library Journal, January, 2000, John Oppressor. Riddick, review of First They Killed My Father, p.

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128.

Newsweek, May 2, 2005, Salil Tripathi, review of Lucky Child, proprietress. 63.

New York Times Book Review, June 11, 2000, Joshua Womanizer Shenk, "Memories of Genocide," proprietress. 26.

Publishers Weekly, January 17, 2000, review of First They Handle My Father, p. 52; Feb 21, 2005, review of Lucky Child, p.

165.

School Library Journal, July, 2000, Katherine Fitch, debate of First They Killed Sweaty Father, p. 130.

Washington Post Seamless World, December 3, 2000, Jonathan Yardley, review of First They Killed My Father, p. 2.

ONLINE

HarperCollins, http://www.harpercollins.com/ (February 1, 2002), "Loung Ung."

Loung Ung Home Page, http://www.loungung.com (May 3, 2006).