Pol Pot

Imagine you’re world being turned around from living peacefully and happy to murdering people that you don’t want just to stay alive. This is what people had to go through in Cambodia when Khmer Rouge, a radical Communist regime, came to power in 1975. They started to move people in the countryside and made everyone work, even childrens. Millions of people died by starvation and sickness. In Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick, people’s physiological states changes three ways, person's…

The non-fiction book First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers written by Loung Ung recounts of her and family’s experiences during the Khmer Rouge. Many families such as Ung 's family had to evacuate their homes and from that point on had to strategize for their survival. Survivors of the Khmer Rouge used several tactics in order to stay alive and/or keep their remaining family members alive. One strategy survivors used was lying about their identity/background because that…

Malcolm X once said, “There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.” Loung Ung is a victim of the 1975 Cambodian Genocide and lost almost everything that she held dear to her including her home, her parents, and two of her sisters. However, she did not let their deaths weight her down as she went on to survive the wrath of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge started a takeover…

Try being forced to move away from your home country, family, and everything you know to escape an unsafe environment. About 1.7 Million out of 7-8 million Cambodians were killed due to the Khmer Rouge Genocide, not one person has been persecuted for their actions during this time. Loung Ung was forced to leave everything she knew in Cambodia including her sister Chou, to move to America. She moved with Meng and Eang, Meng is Loung’s oldest brother and Eang is his wife. She moved because of the…

Pol Pot wanted to start the civilization over again, that history itself is restarting. In his vision, not everyone would be able to participate, only farmers would be allowed (Kiernan). Farmers, or “the old people,” had the power to bring about the utopia, also known as the Agricultural Utopia, Communist vision. For Pol Pot to succeed with his idea of restarting history, he isolated Cambodia from the rest of the…

First They Killed My Father, a tile which fits both the tone of the book and the storyline. It is a foreshadowing for the cruel events of murder in the book; and though Keav was the first of the family to pass away, Loung’s father was the first to be killed. As Professor Inness-Brown says: the title already tells the audience that her father is killed, but the word “first” shows us that there are more cruel events to will follow. Also mentioned by Professor Inness-Brown: these events are…

The social movement of Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (in translation: Mothers of the Plaza the Mayo) was founded during a dark period of Argentina’s history- the so called Dirty war. The Dirty war (Spanish: Guerra Sucia), which was also known as the Process of National Reorganization (Spanish: Proceso de Reorganización Nacional or El Proceso), was a period in which suspected dissidents and subversives where persecuted by the Argentine government. It started in roughly 1974 (although some sources…

Being separated from the person you love for two weeks might be hard. But being separated from your own sibling for almost 15 years is what Loung Ung had to go through with her sister Chou, and that’s after escaping a war, too. In the book Lucky Child by Loung Ung, Loung and her sister Chou are separated when Loung is given the opportunity to go to America with her brother and her sister in law. Chou is forced to stay in Cambodia with the rest of their family where the war is still going on,…

My mom has been always there for me for all of my best and worst moments. She has fought and sacrificed so much for me, and I know for a fact that she is the one person I can rely on for anything. Melinda Luong is a name I will always smile to and she is the one who is determined to make my life successful and prosperous. My mother deserves a gold medal because she is a hardworking mother of three who will always put her family’s needs in front of hers. She has fought through the communists of…

The Indonesian Genocide 1965-1966 was an anti-communist attack, tat lead to the overthrown president Kusno Sokarno being replaced by Suharto who was an army general. Killings followed a coup that took place on October 1, 1965, in Jakarta. This coup killed six army generals, and it formed a revolutionary council, seizing power from Sukarno. General Suharto was elected as President, filling in for Sukarno. Suharto led the genocide that killed about 1 million people, and left 100,000 people…