First They Killed My Father

In Loung’s world, no one is as important as her father. This man unconditionally loves and supports Loung, despite the challenges that she brings to the family in Phnom Penh. He sees the good in her and urges her to stay true to herself. If not for his love and support, Loung might not have survived to the end of the war.

Her father, Sem Im Ung, was a smart man who understood how to help and work with people. His intelligence under pressure ensures that his family survives past the first camp. His life experience working for the government gives him street smarts that he uses to get by in dire straits. He arranges for his son to work for one of the camp leaders, one of many ways he provides extra food for his starving family.

As a member of the previous ruling party, Pa is specially targeted by the Khmer Rouge. When he is finally abducted and likely killed, he had already prepared his family to survive without him.

Where Loung’s father is resourceful, her mother is not—at least not during the earliest years of the Cambodian genocide. Ay Choung Ung is a beautiful woman who is pampered by her husband when they live in the capital city. When the war comes to Phnom Penh, she is unsure what will become of her. Loung’s mother relies on her husband and her children for day-to-day survival. Despite their immense differences, Loung and Ma love each other.

Before the war, Loung’s mother is rather hard on her for not being as ladylike as her older and younger sisters, but in the long run, this pays off for Loung. After the war evacuation and forced resettlement, Loung becomes the strongest female in the family; without her, Ma might not have made it as far as she did. After Pa dies, Loung doubts her mother’s chances for survival. Nevertheless, Ma steps up to the challenge and helps her family by doing what work she could around the hut and the camp. While Loung manages the death of her father with maturity and understanding, she falls apart in the wake of her mother’s death, losing track of a few days of memory.

Loung’s three sisters are important parts of her life. Keav and Geak do not survive the war. Keav, the oldest sister, dies of malnutrition and dehydration in her camp. Geak, the youngest, dies with Ma. Chou, the sensitive, slightly older sister, survives the war. She stays in Cambodia and marries when she is 18.

All through her life, Loung looks up to Keav. She is a wild girl who is also smart—in other words, everything that Loung tries to be. Keav is taken from the family and brought to a camp full of girls her age. A short time after, Keav becomes very sick and dies from stomach problems. Loung describes the scene as if she is right there with her sister. This is the first death of an immediate family member that Loung endures. She writes, “The reality of Keav’s death is too sad so I create a fantasy world to live in” (100).

When Geak dies, Loung is already on her own in another camp. A surge of emotion draws her back to Ro Leap, where she learns that Ma and Geak are both dead. Like the episode with Keav, Loung imagines what happened to them vividly. Sadly, it is clear to Loung from well before Geak’s death that the girl would not survive the war. She suffered from malnutrition and had not grown at all in the years of the war. In the photographs of the family, there is only one photograph that proves Geak even existed.

Despite her emotional weaknesses that often frustrated Loung, Chou is the sister who survived. Just a few years older than Loung, Chou struggles to stand up for herself. When Ma tells the girls to leave for new camps, she instructs them to go separate ways. Although Loung is prepared to do so, Chou tags along because of her sister’s strength. Much to Loung’s happy surprise, when Chou turns 18, she marries and eventually has five children. Chou lives a happy life with her large family in Bat Deng, and her and Loung’s love is quickly rekindled when they see each other again at the end of the memoir.

Even though these two brothers are individual people, they are rarely mentioned alone in the story. Meng is 18 and Khouy is 16 when the Khmer Rouge forces the family’s relocation. The two brothers are strong forces in Loung’s life. Much like Pa, Meng is soft-spoken, responsible, and generous. Before the relocation, Meng prepares to return to France to continue his schooling and settle down with wife. Khouy, meanwhile, drives a motorcycle and practices karate. When his parents are not around, Khouy is responsible for doling out punishments to his siblings.

The brothers are later sent to camps filled with other young men their own age. They are often together and occasionally pop up in various parts of the story. However, at the end, it is Meng who chooses to take Loung on the journey to America with him. He sees the potential in Loung and sees that the other siblings would survive in their homeland. His decision proves correct.

As the book progresses, Khouy loses his physical strength that set him apart from so many other boys before the genocide.