I bought this book in January 2012 in Hanoi, Vietnam for 80.000 Dong.

Loung Ung (born 1970) is a Cambodian-born American human-rights activist and lecturer. Ung was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the sixth of seven children and the third of four girls, to Seng Im Ung and Ay Choung Ung. Her actual birthdate is unknown; the Khmer Rouge destroyed many of the birth records of the inhabitants of cities in Cambodia. At ten years of age, she escaped from Cambodia as a survivor of what became known as "the Killing Fields" during the reign of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime. After emigrating to the United States and adjusting to her new country, she wrote two books which related her life experiences from 1975 through 2003. She is the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World.

Today, Ung is married and lives with her husband in Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.

Her second memoir, Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind, chronicles her adjustment to life in the U.S. with and without her family, and the experiences of her surviving family members in Cambodia during the ensuing warfare between Vietnamese troops and the Khmer Rouge. It covers the period of 1980 until 2003.

A very impressive book, though I would recommend to read the first memoir - "First they killed my father", before this one. It can be read separately, but I think it helpss :-)

I liked the contrast. Contrast between horror of war, death and ordinary life in a suburb in Vermont- Contrast between lipstick and a crush on a blond boy and walking long distances for water and catching fish and being captured by the Khmer Rouge.

An interesting way of narrating Loung and Chous lives in Vermonat and Cambodia.

I read some critical comments about the "truthfulness" of Loung Ungs narrative (more about the first memoir), but I think the important thing is that the reader gets to realize what kind of horrors happened in the 80s and 90s (and still today in other parts of the world) and how hard - but possible - it is to cope with that when life gets back to "normal".


Counts for Cambodia.

Please do NOT wild release this book, it belongs to my Permanent Collection.

Gute Reise!