Luong Ung’s memoir, First They Killed My Father (2000), recounts a young girl’s experience as the Communist Khmer Rouge regime overturns Cambodia in the 1970s. Luong Ung begins her memoir with a description of her loving family in their country’s capital city, Phnom Penh. Luong lives with her mother and father, her older brothers, Meng, Khouy, and Kim, and her sisters Keav, Chou, and Geak. The family flees the capital city together, and along the road, Luong sees countless other families in the same situation as hers. Throughout most of her displacement, Luong remains surrounded by other victims of the Khmer Rouge. As Luong’s account illustrates, however, the trauma Luong and the others endure alongside each other does not bring them closer together. The Khmer Rouge wants to create a new society, and purports to value very specific characteristics. The party ruthlessly persecutes individuals who do not fit their definition of a good citizen. In this context, where any number of traits can instantly put someone in danger, people become afraid for their lives. People under the same pressure fear not only the Khmer Rouge, but each other - what other people might learn about them and report about them. The practices of the Khmer Rouge break down trust and normal interaction between Cambodian people. As ordinary citizens continue to experience the same injustices, they grow further apart. Luong describes how her own feelings of guilt, self-preservation, and helplessness isolate her from those around her. Within her own extended family, Luong shows how shared losses create spaces between family members that no one wants to discuss. First They Killed My Father illustrates how the Khmer Rouge isolates millions of Cambodian people from one another during its reign of terror.

Fear

The practices of the Khmer Rouge lead people to fear each other, which effectively isolates people from one another. After Luong’s family flees the city of Phnom Penh, they come to the village of Ro Leap. The chief and Khmer Rouge soldiers control the village, and the local people, or base people, enjoy special privileges because in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge, their countryside existence makes them model citizens. Luong feels detached from all of the other newly arrived people as well. She says of Ro Leap: “Social contact among the new people is almost nonexistent. Everyone keeps to themselves, fearing that if they share personal thoughts or feelings someone will report them to the Angkar. This happens frequently now because turning someone in to the chief can reap rewards…” (p. 64). All of the new, forcibly displaced people in Ro Leap must begin new lives around rice farming, away from their former homes and occupations. However, the people’s victimization does not bring them together. As the hated group of people in the Khmer Rouge’s new society, friendships among them are dangerous. Families do not speak to each other because they worry that people may report any negative opinions they may reveal. The Khmer Rouge creates an environment that encourages people to betray and fear each other. Later, Luong goes to live at a children’s camp. Although she lives with many other young girls in the same situation, Luong knows: “…I am alone here, even though I eat the same food and sleep in the same hut with eighty girls…we live together in silence. We keep to ourselves because we are all hiding secrets. My secret is our lives in Phnom Penh. For another girl, it may be that she has a handicapped brother…” (p. 136). Physically, Luong is never alone. She spends her days and nights surrounded by other girls who are also away from their families. However, even the young girls do not risk communication with one another. Several aspects of Luong’s former life in Phnom Penh are dangerous to mention. (Contemptible facts according to the Khmer Rouge include Luong’s Buddhist, French-speaking father and his former position as a military policeman for the Lon Nol government, the family’s Chinese ancestry, their large apartment, and Mazda car). Luong can only guess what the other girls hide about themselves. Separated from their families, the young girls at the children’s camp do not turn to each other for comfort because they are afraid to reveal their true, multi-faceted identities. The fear in Cambodia is so extreme at the time, that families believe they must shut themselves away from others entirely. Luong relates: “Kim tells me that from now on I have to watch out for myself. Not only am I never to talk to anyone about our former lives, but I’m never to trust anyone either. It is best if I just stop talking completely so I won’t unintentionally disclose information about our family” (p. 47). Luong’s brother, Kim, tells Luong that she now only has herself. He tells her that she cannot trust or speak to anyone. In order to avoid an incriminating disclosure of any kind, Luong must remain silent. Fear of the Khmer Rouge keeps Luong and her family isolated from other people who endure the same injustices, which prevents the formation of bonds between people of all ages, in any circumstance, and stops even basic human interaction.

Experiences

Aside from the Khmer Rouge’s fear campaign, the desolation that the regime causes further contributes to the breakdown of human connections. While at Ro Leap, Luong’s father manages to secure a small amount of rice to supplement the family’s meager rations. One night, Luong secretly eats a bit of the uncooked rice. Luong’s parents never blame anyone for the missing rice, but Luong feels intense guilt and thinks: “…I know I am bad and deserve whatever low life-form I will be reincarnated as in the next life. Who else but a bad person would cause the starvation of her family for her own selfish stomach? From that day on, I stay more and more to myself” (p. 90). The shared experience of starvation does not bring the family closer together. The individuals suffer in their own ways. Desperate for food, six-year-old Luong takes rice from the family’s communal container. Luong feels terrible about her action, and convinces herself that she is inherently a bad person. In her guilt, she tells herself that she is to blame for the hunger of the rest of her family and deserves punishment. Luong’s guilt and self-loathing cause her to retreat from her family members. When the Vietnamese army attacks the girls’ camp where Luong lives, Luong remembers her feeling of helplessness as a wounded girl calls for help: “Her hand grabs her chest as she coughs out blood. I want to help her. I wish to help her, but I am much smaller than she. I scream and cover my ears as another mortar explodes nearby. Panicked, I turn my back on her and jump out of the hut. When the roof collapses, the girl continues to scream long anguished cries as flames engulf the hut” (p. 166). As Vietnamese mortars destroy the camp, Luong witnesses the suffering of another girl. In the same room as the wounded girl, Luong sees and hears the girl’s need. While she immediately wants to help the girl, Luong feels helpless. Ultimately, Luong does not attempt to help the wounded girl, and flees the dorm without her. In the girl’s final moments, Luong abandons the girl and witnesses her death. While so physically close, Luong watches their fates seem to arbitrarily diverge. Even with other survivors, however, there often seem to be no words or actions that can offer support. When Luong finds herself near a boy who loses family members, she thinks: “My heart leaps for him. I want to reach out to him, but instead I turn and walk away. He is alone now too” (p. 199). Luong also experiences the loss of family members during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. She empathizes completely with the boy. She wantsto comfort him. However, she feels that regardless of their shared experience, she has nothing to offer the boy. Luong’s sentiment causes her to forgo contact with the boy and also contributes to her sense of helplessness and worthlessness. The starvation, violence, and familial loss that Luong experiences, and witnesses, cause her to sink further inside of herself, and to believe that just as other people cannot help her, she has nothing good to offer other people.

Loss

Within Luong’s family, the loss of family members does not bring the survivors closer together. At one point during the family’s displacement, several of the family members reunite. Luong observes, “No one in the family has ever explicitly stated that we are not to bring [those who are gone] up in our conversations. Yet we all know not to speak about them. Each of us keeps our memories of them private and safely locked in the boxes of our own hearts” (p. 154). The reality of Luong’s missing brother, sister, and father pains everyone in her family. Everyone remains acutely aware of the missing family members, but no one wants to highlight their absences and potentially upset someone. The missing family members become taboo. Memories become private. Later, Luong’s older brother Kim must tell her other brothers the sad news about their parents and youngest sister. As Luong lays in a hammock nearby, “They whisper to each other, as if trying to shield Chou and me from news we already knew. I shut my eyes, not wanting to see Meng and Khouy’s faces as they receive the news” (p. 202). The sisters Luong and Chou already know about their parents and youngest sister. However, their brother, Kim, does not want Luong and Chou to hear about their losses again. Kim wants to spare Luong and Chou. Luong does not want to be a part of the conversation either. She purposely avoids her brothers’ faces as they learn about the loss of their family members. The siblings do not want to talk about their family’s losses. When the surviving siblings arrive at the home of their mother’s brother, Luong relates her behavior when the family begins to talk about the war. She says, “I pretend to have no memory of it. They do not ask me about my experiences. In our culture, it is enough that the oldest child relates the family’s story. Children are not asked for opinions, feelings, or what they individually endure. I do not volunteer information…Often I walk away from their chatter” (p. 212). Again, an understanding seems to persist among the family members. Luong does not communicate her feelings, and her family members do not ask her any questions. Luong and her Uncle Leang mourn the same people, but they find that they do not connect over their shared loss. Throughout her life under the Khmer Rouge, and afterwards, Luong and her family members bear their losses alone.

Loung Ung’s memoir, First They Killed My Father, recounts the emotional isolation that mass persecution inflicts. The author describes how she first learns about the new party in power, and how her family flees their home in Phnom Penh. She highlights the various places the Khmer Rouge forces her to live and work, and finally, how she manages to escape the regime. As the Khmer Rouge causes the displacement, pain, and deaths of millions of Cambodian people, the regime sows a terror that also isolates individuals from other people. The Khmer Rouge relies on fear to keep people disconnected and powerless. Persecuted individuals avoid social interaction because they worry that other people may report their opinions, discover incriminating aspects of their identity, or learn personal information about them of any kind. Under the control of armed soldiers, the civilians do not have the power to effectively unite and resist. Luong describes how helpless she feels as her family starves, as other girls call to her for help, and as she witnesses other children lose family members. Luong suffers the deaths of her own family members under the Khmer Rouge. As Luong loses loved ones, she sees how only unspeakable memories remain. Throughout her memoir, Luong Ung illustrates one of the Khmer Rouge’s most tragic effects: the alienation of innocent people from one another.

References

L. Ung. (2000). First they killed my father: A daughter of Cambodia remembers. Harper Collins Publishers.