Book
Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind
Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind is a 2005 memoir by Loung Ung about her life after the Khmer Rouge.[1] It follows First They Killed My Father and tells, in alternating chapters, her new life in Vermont and the life of her sister Chou in Cambodia.[1][2]
About the book
In 1980, at the age of ten, Loung Ung arrived in America as a refugee, after years of hunger, violence and loss under the Khmer Rouge.[3] Her eldest brother, Meng, could afford to bring only one sibling, and he chose her, the youngest. She became the lucky child of the title.[2][1][4] With Meng and his wife, she traveled to America by way of Thailand, and a local church sponsored the family's move to Vermont.[4][1] Her one surviving sister and two brothers stayed behind.[2]
In Burlington, Loung learns about Disney characters, Christmas trees and Halloween. She learns that fireworks on the Fourth of July are not bombs, and that she need not hide food in her bed at night.[3][4] The family lives on food stamps at first, and classmates take her poor English for a lack of intelligence.[1][5] Memories of the war stay with her. In time she studies at St. Michael's College.[1][2]
Chou, just two years apart from Loung, had grown close to her through the deaths of their parents and sisters.[3] Raised a city girl, she lives in a hut in a poor rural village with her aunt, uncle and cousins. There is little food, no electricity and no running water, and land mines and Khmer Rouge fighters remain.[4] Chou struggles to get an education, and her family arranges her marriage.[1][5]
The book ends when Loung returns to Cambodia and the sisters meet again after fifteen years apart.[1][4]
Writing
Loung tells her own story in her own voice, and Chou's story is told in the third person.[4] Her account of Chou's life draws on her many return visits to Cambodia.[3]
Publication and editions
HarperCollins in New York published the first edition on April 12, 2005.[1][3] Its length is given as 288 pages by Kirkus and as 268 pages by the Los Angeles Times; the Open Library record lists xv, 268 pages.[1][4][3] ISBNs include 9780060733957 (paperback) and 0060733942.[2][1] A paperback followed on April 11, 2006.[2]
Lucky Child was followed by Lulu in the Sky (2012), the third memoir in her trilogy.[6][7]
Reception
Kirkus Reviews called it a moving account "of transition, transformation, and reunion." It praised the Vermont scenes but found Chou's chapters, told secondhand, less vivid.[1] In the Los Angeles Times, Merle Rubin called the book "an unforgettable portrait of resilience" and praised its "largeness of spirit."[4]
Access
References 7
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Kirkus Reviews, Lucky Child
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 HarperCollins, Lucky Child
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Open Library, Lucky child (HarperCollins, 2005)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Los Angeles Times, Cambodian sisters cross a divide of years, cultures (April 29, 2005)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 BookPage, A childhood interrupted by war (April 2005)
- ↑ Saint Michael's College, College selects another memoir by Loung Ung for book award program (March 2021)
- ↑ Kirkus Reviews, Lulu in the Sky (April 17, 2012)
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