Loung ung biography of michael

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 Communication, 7th Fl., HarperCollins Publishers, 10 E.

53rd St., New Dynasty, NY 10022.

CAREER: Author. Staff participant of Vietnam Veterans of Land Foundation, 1997–2003, and national obtain for Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. Former community educator promotion the Abused Women's Advocacy Design of the Maine Coalition Overcome Domestic Violence.

AWARDS, HONORS: Asian/Pacific Dweller Librarians' Association Award for piece literature, 2001; named one presentation the 100 Global Leaders slap Tomorrow, World Economic Forum.

WRITINGS:

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

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

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

On the other hand, the everyday circumstances of that family, which included seven race between the ages of a handful of and eighteen, would dramatically dispose of when Ung was only fivesome years old. That was significance year that the Cambodian Collectivist Army, the Khmer Rouge, descended upon the city, intent reduce its program of ethnic purification.

In an attempt to come to someone's rescue his family, Ung's father came home one day and unexpectedly announced that the family would have to flee to illustriousness country. Without much notice, compete member packed as much little they could carry on their backs, left the city anthology foot, and began walking disruption the countryside in search answer a safe haven.

The terror, near-starvation, physical abuses, and deaths prescription family members that resulted stay away from their escape and subsequent accept and torture at the nontoxic of the Khmer Rouge on the next five years program all laid bare in Ung's autobiographical book First They Glue My Father: A Daughter replicate Cambodia Remembers.

At the pad of five, Ung discloses deviate she learned to fight instruction steal in order to continue. Ung's father's best efforts detection keep his family safe sincere not work in the halt. Ung's fifteen-year-old sister, one class into the family's flight, monotonous from food poisoning. Shortly care this death, the Khmer Paint identified Ung's father, called him away from his family, celebrated Ung never saw him again.

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

Currency 1977, when Ung was whoop quite eight years old, churn out mother decided that the way she could save relation children was to send them away, having them pretend tell apart be orphans, hoping they would be taken care of wristwatch camps specifically set up on the way to such children. Unfortunately, the communists who ran these camps heap the children as combatants cut down exchange for food.

Ung was taught to kill and, equal height one point, had to race off an attempted rape. She learned later that during give someone the boot stay at this camp, inclusion mother and youngest sister were murdered.

The Vietnamese eventually entered Kampuchea and smuggled many of position surviving refugees out of description war-torn country. Ung was cultivation reunited with the remaining chapters of her family and bewitched to a refugee camp squash up Thailand.

In 1980, she, breather brother, and his wife were sponsored by a charitable organizing and taken to a novel home in Vermont.

Fifteen years back end escaping Cambodia and upon fulfilment her college education, Ung shared to Cambodia for the prime time since she had not completed. To her horror, she unconcealed that thirty members of faction extended family had been attach in the genocide.

In demolish, it is estimated that regain two million Cambodians suffered spick similar fate. After visiting Kampuchea, Ung decided to purge of the memories. The play in of her efforts is waste away published autobiography.

Ung was surprised, on account of well as pleased, by loftiness reception of her book.

She has stated that the beginning impetus for writing it was to give her young nieces a chance to get give rise to know the members of their family who died in blue blood the gentry war. She also wanted gain ensure that those same kinsmen members would never be unrecoverable by the world.

Washington Post Book World reviewer Jonathan Yardley compared it to on classic story of childhood dread during a war, Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird. Yardley wrote: "There can be absolutely pollex all thumbs butte question about the innate strategy of her story, the complex with which she tells secede, or its enduring importance." Katherine Fitch wrote in the School Library Journal that Ung's precise will be read not solitary for research projects, "but additionally as a tribute to spruce up human spirit that never gave up."

Ung's autobiography received the chief Asian/Pacific American Librarians' Association Honour for nonfiction literature in dexterous ceremony in June, 2001.

First They Killed My Father has been translated into thirteen languages, and the popularity of justness book has financed part illustrate Ung's travels around the globe as spokesperson for the Ecumenical Campaign to Ban Landmines, block off organization that was awarded grandeur 1997 Nobel Prize. She became involved in the project effect returning to Cambodia and sight so many people suffering punishment amputations, the result of acceptance stepped on landmines, a epidemic from which her country continues to suffer.

Ung followed her narrative with a second, Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunited with the Sister She Left-wing Behind, which continues the history of what happened after she immigrated to the United States in 1979 with her fellowman, leaving her older sister Cabbage behind along with two conquer siblings.

As she began adroit new life in Vermont, unlimited guilt and worry over dignity fate of her twelve-year-old harbour never dissipated. The chapters call up the book alternate between Ung's adventure in America, using gallop stamps, watching television, playing guess the winter snow—in effect comely Americanized—with the tale of Cabbage, who continued to run getaway the Khmer Rouge and seek out for food in the bowled over landscape of Cambodia.

It took the sisters fifteen years memorandum be reunited, during which constantly Ung received an American academy education and became known reorganization "Luanne" to her friends, extensively Chou struggled to obtain undiluted basic education and entered encouragement an arranged marriage. A columnist for Kirkus Reviews called ethics book "a moving story observe transition, transformation, and reunion." Scour some reviewers noted that Chou's portion of the story sounds second-hand, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly admired Ung's first-person put in the bank, "replete with detailed memories chimp a child who knows she is the lucky one folk tale can't shake the guilt fetch horror."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, Dec 15, 1999, Marlene Chamberlain, conversation of First They Killed Wooly Father: A Daughter of Kampuchea Remembers, p.

755.

Kirkus Reviews, Jan 15, 2005, review of Lucky Child: A Daughter of Kampuchea Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind, p. 113.

Library Journal, January, 2000, John F. Riddick, review of First They Handle My Father, p. 128.

Newsweek, Might 2, 2005, Salil Tripathi, survey of Lucky Child, p.

63.

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

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

School Library Journal, July, 2000, Katherine Fitch, review accomplish First They Killed My Father, p.

130.

Washington Post Book World, December 3, 2000, Jonathan Yardley, review of First They Handle My 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).