Monthly review prompt for "First They Killed My Father"

What was the author's purpose in writing this book, how can you tell? How well was this purpose achieved?

The purpose of this book was to describe what Loung Ung's life was like during these hard times. From what i could tell from the book, Luong wanted the reader to know how people were treated in this time by the Khmer Rouge and what life was like in general during the time inside and outside of camp. The quotes she used really made this book excellent. I can not express how well this book was written and how the quotes made described the scenes at hand. She seemed to make it very easy for the reader to tell how she felt, what was going on, and how other characters felt without them even really being in the midst of what was happening. These were just a few of the things that stood out to me. The purpose of showing the reader what life was like was definitely fulfilled from the very beginning of this book.

"This morning, I am stuck at a noodle shop a block from our apartment in this big chair. I'd much rather be playing hopscotch with my friends."-2 This shows that Luong goes to the noodle shop on a semi regular basis in the morning. You can tell this by her writing style and the way she describes the setting. She describes the setting well enough to not make it boring but to also get the point across to the reader that she wants them to be informed about her life.

Throughout the book she shows that her purpose of the book was just to inform people. She emphasizes the key aspects and even the ones that are not so relevant. During this book she helps the reader completely understand her purpose of wanting the reader to enjoy the story but also learn about her culture and how she lived through these hard times.

How would you describe the author's style of writing? What's your opinion of the style?

I would describe Loung Ung's writing more of a suspenseful kind of writer. I find her style very amusing and it always seems to keep the reader (in my case me) on their toes throughout the book. For example during the book this part stood out to me, "Leave me alone. Don't bother me," he yells and comes after me with a large rusty silver cleaver. With my knees shaking i run from him." (199) This part shows the tension in the air and also how the character feels at this time. Pithy's brother is sad and angry because his mother died. I find it ironic that he wants to be left alone but he chases after her.

Another part of the book that stood out to me again that also describes Loung Ung's writing style is this quote on page 183. "You will never be great. What makes you think you will be great? You are nothing. You are an orphan. You'll only be something if you become a hooker." Luong's Foster mother tells Loung that she is worthless. Her new family cares nothing about her. I thought about this throughout the whole book but i wonder why the mother is so petty that she has to make children feel bad about themselves.

One more quote that stood out to me the most over all the others was, "He wants us to follow him to get the water,"...He puts up his palm to stop us. He points to me and waves for me to follow him...I follow him into the woods leaving Chou and Pithy behind." (179) They way Ung describes this situation makes what is about to happen very clear. I could tell right after i finished reading that, she was going to be raped. These descriptions that she uses really helps the reader understand more and focus on her style of writing.

These are some quotes that just show Loung's writing style and how it is different from that of many other writers. She writes in more of a suspenseful thriller genre rather than a biography. I like that a lot more because biography's tend to be boring if the writer does write very enthusiastically, but Luong did a great job writing with enthusiasm while also keeping the book going at a very good pace.

Find out about the author. How did they end up writing this particular book? Is the author's true life reflected in the book in any ways?

I did some research and i found out that Loung does not know her own birthday due to the Khmer Rouge erasing all records of people. This was not put in the book but i found this an interesting fact about what the Khmer Rouge had also done. I also found out that after escaping "the Killing Fields" she emigrated to the United States of America where she wrote this book. She also wrote another book, a sequel to this book called "Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind" which is her second memoir about her struggles with the Khmer Rouge.

Loung Ung wrote this book as a memoir of her memories of being a child soldier. She wrote about how she was trained as a child soldier to become part of the Khmer Rouge. Her life is definitely reflected in this book because it is all about her life. Her personal stories are in this book and you can tell she remembers every single occasion that happened during her life that she showed in the book.

She reflects her life in her writing by explaining some quotes with such emphasis that a reader could tell that it had to be a first hang experience and not just a fictional piece. Loung does not just do this for a few quotes in the book, but for all. She definitely is writing more out of experience and from her heart then she is just trying to make the book sound good.

First They Killed My Father

I forgot to post the last blog post about the book. During this section in the book they were in the village and they were instructed what to do within the village. I found it rather cruel the way the people were treated throughout the book. While they were in the camp i mean. Outside the camp when she had her life they seemed to be quite well off. Luong seemed to be very attached to a few things in this book that seemed to be shown in many different ways. Many of her morals and values were shown indirectly which i liked. The author did a great job of also keeping a great sense of how she felt and also keeping the story along at a very fast pace.

I found parts of this book very sad such as the "picking corn" part. The author described the scenario very well which made it all the more sad. She seemed to do it very well throughout the whole book.

The part where the girls were trained as soldiers was sad as well. I thought they were not treated too poorly yet there was still some really bad things going on within the camp. Even though the girls were treated very well they were also forced into many other things such as marriage.

Overall i thought "First They Killed My Father" was a very well written book. I found the writing style of Luong Ung very unique but it made the book a lot better because of the way she described things. I did have some questions on the book that i will ask my group mates during class but i just found the book very good. I think France was talking about a sequel as well so i would be interested in reading that as well.

A Pretty Interesting Friday (3.19.10)

Today was so much fun, minus a couple things. Started out with school. Spanish was very easy. Chemistry same as always, boring and funny. Ms. Malik is so hard to understand sometimes its insane, and Huy always keeps the class amazingly funny when he gets Ms. Malik angry. So after chemistry i went to Math. I aced my test which brought my grade up even more :). After Math was History. I love history in general, Mr. Omalley is really cool, but today we took notes so it was really boring. After History we had lunch. Lunch was pretty good, i do not remember exactly what i had, i just remember we all went somewhere and it was really good. After lunch was english. No TED friday :(. Instead we went to the pit to read and discuss our books. After we had PE and it was extra credit pacer day. I ran 80 with some other dude from track. I was exhausted after but it got me a bunch of extra credit points.

After school we all met up at the benches and got ready to walk to frisbee. It took us all like thirty minutes to decide what we wanted to do. We were all sitting around at the benches and talking about how the day was going. After about twenty minutes most of us decided to go to frisbee and we were waiting for all of the other people to decide what they wanted to do. Finally, we decided to go to frisbee and play basketball because the Lincoln Middle School grass field was closed. On the way to frisbee we stopped to get water balloons and food before actually getting to Lincoln Middle School.

We arrived at lincoln at four and then started to play basketball. I played a couple people in 1 on 1 and won. After playing basketball for a while we went to the bathrooms to fill up some water balloons. In total we only filled up about twenty water balloons. The rest either popped or were already ripped. After filling them up we had a water balloon fight that lasted about five minutes.

After the water balloon fight we (Alvin, Myron, Shuan, and I) went to the basketball courts again and challenged CJ, Huy, Sean, and Stephen. The game started out pretty fair. They were keeping up with us for about the first five minutes. We killed them, no contest. The final score was like 25 to 6. It was really fun beating them though. We had that great team chemistry. After the game we all went to decide what to do next, go home or go to park street.

In the end we all decided to go home because it was almost seven(It took us like ten minutes to actually decide because a bunch of us had to call our parents.). So we all left frisbee in a semi good mood. I left out the bad stuff that happened. Overall the day was really good though. I can not wait until next friday!

A Pretty Boring Friday (3.12.10)

So i am going to write about how today was not the best friday due to the weather conditions. I do not know how to take up 500 words for this blog post because there is really nothing to write about because nothing happened today. So tomorrow and Sunday it is not supposed to rain but i would not have minded if it rained this weekend and not rained today. Friday is always the fun day for my friends and i but today it was just ruined by the rain.

So today pretty much was horrible because of the rain. It ruined everything we all had planned today after school and during the day. So first during school we could not go anywhere at lunch because of all the rain and everyone was getting soaked so we were all hating it when we went to go get food. Also, today was toga day and all these people were walking around in Toga's because of the spirit day. They all were even more soaked than us because no one seemed to have an umbrella today.

After school today everyone was trying to decide what to do because it was raining and everyone wanted to do something but the rain was just killing it. So Jon, Pranav, and some other people went to frisbee while Alvin, France, Shuan, Amanda, and I waited for the track people to meet up with us at the school.

After the track people met up with us we all went to park street and decided what to do. Amanda went with Alvin to buy some cookies first then they came back and we all stood on the corner and discussed what to do next. Alvin, Amanda, and I bussed to frisbee while France, Andrew, Shuan, and Steven went to Andrews house to play video games. Alvin, Amanda, and I took the bus to frisbee and walked from High Street to lincoln school.

When we arrived at lincoln no one was there. It was just Alvin, Amanda, and I. Jon, Pranav, and the other people must have left frisbee when they saw that no one was there. So we all waited there to see if anyone showed up. While we were there France called us and asked if we wanted to go to Andrew's house and play some video games but we all decided to go our separate ways from frisbee. So Amanda went home and Alvin went to James' house and I walked home (It took forever to walk to bayfarm and my shoes and socks were all soggy and wet by the time i got to my house.).

After walking home i ended up hanging out here for a while and just talking to people on the computer then going to see Alice In Wonderland with Katrina, Helene, Erik, and Sam. I found the movie entertaining, it started out a little bit weird in my perspective but got a lot better as the movie progressed. Overall today was fun even though after school started out boring.

First They Killed My Father

So pretty much i thought the first part of the book was pretty good (I left off at probably the most suspenseful part ever in the book). First off i just wanted to point out that the title just seems so sad, but back to the book. I found it rather slow at first because it was just giving an overview of Loung Ung's life. Besides the fact that it was slow and boring for the first part where she explained her life as a child and her daily routines and what not, i found her life quite interesting. How she got up very early every morning and went to eat the noodles at the restaurant. I think the noodles seemed like Pho but i could be wrong. I think for her family's life they seemed to be in the upper class because Loung Ung seems to be not so much to the point of spoiled but in between spoiled and regularly treated. I was somewhat confused about the Khmer Rouge army. Where did they come from? Who sent them? All of these questions were haunting me because these soldiers just randomly popped up into the story and took them hostage and take them to camps to be trained as soldiers. This part where they were taken to these camps kind of reminded me of the Nazi camps and what they did to the jewish people. I am just using it as an analogy. Pretty much the book is getting better than it was before and i am running out of stuff to say about it. I hope Loung Ung and her family make it out alive so they can be together again. It must be hard for her to be without her family all alone in a camp training to become a child soldier for the Khmer Rouge.

Friday (3.5.10)

So today was alright. First school which was average as always. I was so close to being late today, luckily the bell rang late. During school it was the same as any other friday always. Spanish, Chemistry, Algebra 2, History, Lunch, English, PE, then go meet at the regular spot. After school we all met up to go to frisbee. It took us one hour to walk to frisbee and we pretty much just played basketball and hacky sack. Hacky sacking is our new thing now. We all have our own hacky sack and pretty much at lunch, break, after school, frisbee, or any other time we just kick the sack around. It is pretty fun actually. We are all getting really good at it and eventually we are going to be beasts at it if we all keep up with it.

So at frisbee we pretty much started with hacky sacking and then went to basketball. I think our record for hacky sacking was seven or something near there. After we all got bored of hacky sacking because right now we all suck, we went to play basketball(because James had finally showed up with the ball.). When we played basketball, Ronald was insanely good. He is like the LeBron James of our group. He just beasted on all of us. He was just making everything like it was nothing. After frisbee i had to go home because i had to go to a dinner at Scott's.

After leaving frisbee i went home and got dressed into nice dress clothes XD. I hate dressing up its just not my thing. I look really awkward and stuff. After my mom, my brother(He had trouble getting dressed because he has a brace on his leg because he got twelve stitches on his knee because at school he was playing basketball with his friends. One of his friends shot the ball over the fence of the court and my brother went to get it. He went over the fence and got the ball and when he went around the fence he tripped and fell on some bricks. The bricks then put a gash in his knee that went all the way to the bone and he had to go to the Emergency Room and get seventeen stitches. It was really bad.) my dad, and i got dressed we drove to the dinner.

The dinner was extremely good. So pretty much the dinner took forever for us to actually get the meal. It started out with people talking for like an hour so my brother and i (hobbled)walked to the bar and got some shirley temples. After like an hour of waiting at the bar we went back to the table and waited for like another ten minutes for our food.

The meal started out with salad, then went to chicken or fish or something like that. I could not really tell. After dinner there was desert and it was peach cobbler. It was delicious, and i really liked it. After dinner we all went home and it was really late so i was really tired. So pretty much that was the end to my very long day.