Creator

Loung Ung

Memoirist and activist whose trilogy traces survival under the Khmer Rouge and life afterward in the United States.

Loung Ung is an author, speaker and activist who wrote the memoir First They Killed My Father (2000).[1][2] Her three memoirs trace her survival under the Khmer Rouge and the life she built afterward in the United States.[2][1]

Early life

Ung was a young child in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge took the city in April 1975.[1] Under the regime she was trained as a child soldier.[1][3] In 1980 she escaped by boat to Thailand and spent five months in a refugee camp. She was then resettled in Vermont, where Holy Family Church in Essex Junction and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops sponsored her.[3][2][4]

English was her third language, and she spent years learning to read and write it. She kept a diary to hold on to her stories while she could not yet express herself well in spoken English.[2] In 1993 she earned a bachelor's degree in political science at Saint Michael's College in Vermont.[2][4]

Activism

After she graduated in 1993, she moved to Portland, Maine, where she was a community educator for the Abused Women's Advocacy Project.[2][1] In 1995 she returned to Cambodia for the first time since her escape.[1] In 1997 she moved to Washington, D.C., to join the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World.[2] She was its national spokesperson, a post her website dates from 1997 to 2005.[5][1] She has continued her landmine work through the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.[2] Her campaigns have also addressed violence against women and the use of child soldiers.[1][2]

Ung has said she published her story partly to build a larger platform for speaking about landmines, war and child soldiers.[2] She has spoken at Stanford, Dartmouth, Georgetown, the University of Iowa and the United Nations, and her website counts more than 50 trips back to Cambodia.[1] The World Economic Forum named her among its "100 Global Youth Leaders of Tomorrow."[3]

Books

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers tells of her childhood under the Khmer Rouge from April 1975, when her family fled Phnom Penh, through forced labor, starvation, disease and mass executions.[5][6] HarperCollins published it in 2000, and it became a bestseller.[7][1] In 2001 it won the adult nonfiction award of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association.[3] Translations include Khmer, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese editions.[3] Saint Michael's College chose it as the first-year common text for its class of 2020.[4]

The memoir became a Netflix film, First They Killed My Father, directed by Angelina Jolie and released in September 2017. Ung co-wrote it with Jolie.[3][1]

A "Mission Accomplished" banner at a 2003 Iraq War event moved her to write her second book.[2] Her second memoir, Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind (2005), sets her new life in Vermont against, in alternate chapters, the life of the sister who stayed behind in a Cambodian village.[2][8][6] Her third memoir, Lulu in the Sky, completed the trilogy.[2] A graphic-novel adaptation of her work is forthcoming from Astra Publishing.[1]

Cleveland

Ung lives in the Cleveland area, where she owns three restaurants: Market Garden, Bar Cento and Bier Market.[2]

Recognition

  • Adult nonfiction award of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association, for First They Killed My Father (2001)[3]
  • One of the World Economic Forum's "100 Global Youth Leaders of Tomorrow"[3]
  • Col. Donald G. Cook Distinguished Citizen Award, Saint Michael's College (2018)[4]
  • Cleveland Arts Prize honoree[2]

Works


See also

References 8
  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Loung Ung, official site
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 The Cleveland Arts Prize, Loung Ung (2025)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Omega Institute, Loung Ung
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Saint Michael's College, Loung Ung talks justice, activism (2018)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Kirkus Reviews, First They Killed My Father (December 1, 1999)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Merle Rubin, Cambodian sisters cross a divide of years, cultures, Los Angeles Times (April 29, 2005)
  7. ↑ Open Library, First They Killed My Father (HarperCollins, February 1, 2000)
  8. ↑ Kirkus Reviews, Lucky Child (January 15, 2005)
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This page was last edited on 22 October 2026, at 03:10.