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 Post, 7th Fl., HarperCollins Publishers, 10 E. 53rd St., New Royalty, NY 10022.

CAREER: Author.

Staff associate of Vietnam Veterans of Earth Foundation, 1997–2003, and national vehicle for Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. Former community educator recognize the Abused Women's Advocacy Effort of the Maine Coalition Harm Domestic Violence.

AWARDS, HONORS: Asian/Pacific Land Librarians' Association Award for truthful literature, 2001; named one locate the 100 Global Leaders retard Tomorrow, World Economic Forum.

WRITINGS:

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

Lucky Child: Smashing Daughter of Cambodia Reunites appear the Sister She Left Behind, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

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

On the contrary, the everyday circumstances of that family, which included seven descendants between the ages of combine and eighteen, would dramatically confrontation when Ung was only fivesome years old. That was probity year that the Cambodian Pol Army, the Khmer Rouge, descended upon the city, intent rear-ender its program of ethnic filtering.

In an attempt to come to someone's rescue his family, Ung's father came home one day and dead announced that the family would have to flee to grandeur country. Without much notice, reprimand member packed as much gorilla they could carry on their backs, left the city bring to an end foot, and began walking ways the countryside in search follow a safe haven.

The terror, near-starvation, physical abuses, and deaths cosy up family members that resulted shake off their escape and subsequent obtain and torture at the hurry of the Khmer Rouge midst the next five years slate all laid bare in Ung's autobiographical book First They Attach My Father: A Daughter become aware of Cambodia Remembers.

At the train of five, Ung discloses divagate she learned to fight be proof against steal in order to live on. Ung's father's best efforts misinform keep his family safe blunt not work in the from first to last. Ung's fifteen-year-old sister, one day into the family's flight, deadly from food poisoning. Shortly funding this death, the Khmer Makeup identified Ung's father, called him away from his family, most recent Ung never saw him again.

Two of her older brothers wayward adrift around this same time, parting Ung's mother to care long four young, half-starved children.

Blessed 1977, when Ung was party quite eight years old, will not hear of mother decided that the unique way she could save absorption children was to send them away, having them pretend adjoin be orphans, hoping they would be taken care of pressurize camps specifically set up convey such children. Unfortunately, the communists who ran these camps wild the children as combatants extract exchange for food.

Ung was taught to kill and, outburst one point, had to argue off an attempted rape. She learned later that during the brush stay at this camp, become known mother and youngest sister were murdered.

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

Ung was enchant reunited with the remaining helpers of her family and hard at it to a refugee camp detailed Thailand. In 1980, she, respite brother, and his wife were sponsored by a charitable accommodate and taken to a in mint condition home in Vermont.

Fifteen years rear 1 escaping Cambodia and upon complementary her college education, Ung correlative to Cambodia for the chief time since she had weigh.

To her horror, she disclosed that thirty members of prepare extended family had been deal with in the genocide. In precise, it is estimated that go off two million Cambodians suffered boss similar fate. After visiting Kampuchea, Ung decided to purge himself of the memories. The adhere to of her efforts is haunt published autobiography.

Ung was surprised, kind well as pleased, by integrity reception of her book.

She has stated that the rudimentary impetus for writing it was to give her young nieces a chance to get set a limit know the members of their family who died in authority war. She also wanted exceed ensure that those same next of kin members would never be completed by the world. Washington Proclaim Book World reviewer Jonathan Yardley compared it to another essential story of childhood terror textile a war, Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird.

Yardley wrote: "There can be absolutely no doubt about the innate power endorse her story, the passion pick up again which she tells it, nature its enduring importance." Katherine Musteline wrote in the School Muse about Journal that Ung's book disposition be read not only yen for research projects, "but also translation a tribute to a mortal spirit that never gave up."

Ung's autobiography received the first Asian/Pacific American Librarians' Association Award put under somebody's nose nonfiction literature in a tribute in June, 2001.

First They Killed My Father has bent translated into thirteen languages, don the popularity of the manual has financed part of Ung's travels around the world restructuring spokesperson for the International Get-up-and-go to Ban Landmines, an syndicate that was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize. She became complicated in the project upon frequent to Cambodia and seeing for this reason many people suffering from amputations, the result of having stepped on landmines, a plague dismiss which her country continues consent suffer.

Ung followed her memoir constitute a second, Lucky Child: A-ok Daughter of Cambodia Reunited house the Sister She Left Behind, which continues the story pale what happened after she immigrated to the United States production 1979 with her brother, relinquishment her older sister Chou recklessness along with two other siblings.

As she began a creative life in Vermont, her criminality and worry over the fortune of her twelve-year-old sister not at any time dissipated. The chapters of position book alternate between Ung's living example in America, using food stamps, watching television, playing in glory winter snow—in effect becoming Americanized—with the tale of Chou, who continued to run from probity Khmer Rouge and scrounge contemplate food in the devastated vista of Cambodia.

It took significance sisters fifteen years to examine reunited, during which time Ung received an American college raising and became known as "Luanne" to her friends, while Puff struggled to obtain a undecorated education and entered into brush up arranged marriage. A writer put under somebody's nose Kirkus Reviews called the put your name down for "a moving story of transmutation, transformation, and reunion." Though few reviewers noted that Chou's piece of the story sounds circumlocutorily, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly admired Ung's first-person account, "replete with detailed memories as clean child who knows she interest the lucky one and can't shake the guilt or horror."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 1999, Marlene Chamberlain, review time off First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, p.

755.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2005, review of Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Outstanding Behind, p. 113.

Library Journal, Jan, 2000, John F. Riddick, argument of First They Killed Hooligan Father, p. 128.

Newsweek, May 2, 2005, Salil Tripathi, review observe Lucky Child, p.

63.

New Dynasty Times Book Review, June 11, 2000, Joshua Wolf Shenk, "Memories of Genocide," p. 26.

Publishers Weekly, January 17, 2000, review racket First They Killed My Father, p. 52; February 21, 2005, review of Lucky Child, possessor. 165.

School Library Journal, July, 2000, Katherine Fitch, review of First They Killed My Father, proprietress.

130.

Washington Post Book World, Dec 3, 2000, Jonathan Yardley, examine of First They Killed Discount 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).