First They Killed My Father by Luong Ung is a memoir documenting the experiences that the author had being in Khmer Rouge control. When the Khmer Rouge invaded Cambodia, many families were put through a trial testing their willpower. The Ung family was one of these families and this book shows how the whole family dealt with living in conditions that were very.. chaotic and unjust. This book is a great example of a memoir and throughout the book you'll be wondering: Will they make it to the end?
How would you describe the author's style of writing? What's your opinion of the style?
Luong writes in a way that captivates the reader. She recollects her memories to create a vivid image of the environment she was in. To me, it's interesting how clear her memories are to the point where she could describe the city streets in full detail. Taken from the first paragraph of the book, "Already at 6 A.M. people in Phnom Penh are rushing and bumping into each other on dusty.. streets." You can already tell how much she emphasizes the environment she lives in. She also dives deep into her mind and the mind of others, telling us what her young self thought about whatever she was facing.
Although sometimes she would come out of this style of writing and go into a third-person omniscient like way of telling her stories. I could only guess that she wrote these parts to be what her imagination would be like. When she goes into this style of writing, we know for sure that she is not witnessing the event first-hand. So one could assume that she is telling us what she had imagined to happen. Even so, it still allows readers to get a good grasp of what happened to so and so just in case they were wondering. And she does quite a good job of it.
Her style really appeals to me. It drew me in and kept me in. Needless to say I will be excited when I get the time to pick up the sequel to this book.
What was the author's purpose(s) in writing this book, and how can you tell? How well was this purpose achieved?
You could tell her purpose was to educate the people who were unaware or curious to know how bad the conditions were when the Khmer Rouge took over. Since this book is a memoir, the purpose of the book comes off pretty clear. The events mentioned in this book portray a harsh and ruthless takeover; she writes how she and her family lived with it and describing glimpses of other families when she could. Ung clearly lets you know that her story is not at all unique in the author's note of the book, "Though these events constitute my experience, my story mirrors that of millions of Cambodians. If you had been living in Cambodia during this period, this would be your story too."
Her purpose came across pretty well. Picking up the book knowing that it's a memoir alone can already give you hints as to what the author's purpose would be. Depending on the topic of the memoir, different purposes could be targeted. It could be just a memoir written to show a reader how the author lived their life or whatever. But with this book, she wanted to tell readers who were interested in how life was like when you're being totally controlled by a ruthless group of individuals. And she did it well.
The intensity of the detail she expresses helps get her point across by a lot. By going into detail, she makes you feel as if you were her. As if you were the one who was seeing what she was seeing. She doesn't make you feel like a reader, but rather she puts you in her own shoes so you could have as much of a first-hand experience as you possibly can. Doing this makes her purpose very clear to me.
For what audience(s) is this book intended, and how can you tell?
This book is intended for whoever is interested in what life was like during the Khmer Rouge. Like I said before, this book is a memoir of just that and it aims to educate the uneducated. The reader will be shown how ONE family dealt with an overwhelming ordeal, but the author insists that this book would be basically telling the story of every other family. This book was hard for her to write, seeing how she probably had to look back at her hardest times when she was living under Khmer control.
In the back of the book, she explains how hard it was for her to write the book. "With the narrative style and point of view selected, I sat down and wrote the first three chapters.. in the past tense. But it did not feel authentic. I knew I was protecting myself by writing in the past tense." She realizes how difficult it still is for her to write about her experiences. But she manages to get through that and continue writing a great book.
Also in the back of the book, a little section entitled "Letters from Cambodian Readers" also hint the fact at who this book was for. Along with the uneducated, this book was also meant for people who shared the same experience as Luong Ung and want to hear their stories too. It shows that even though the general idea of the book is the same for everyone else that went through the tough times, there are still individual details that one has entitled to them and themselves only.
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