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Author tells the story of her escape from her war-stricken homeland
By Meredith Shepherd
Equinox Staff
Published: Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Loung Ung, at KSC on Tuesday Sept. 7.
“I believe we have to teach the art of peace because it is in all of us,” Loung Ung, author and lecturer said.
Ung said she is an activist, author, and lecturer, who for the last fifteen years has been supporting equality, human rights, and overall justice worldwide and in her native land, Cambodia.
Ung presented her memoir, “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers” to Keene State College on Tuesday Sept. 7 in the L.P. Young Student Center’s, Mabel Brown room.
Her memoir is about how the two million Cambodians out of a population of seven million died because of the Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in 1975-1979. She writes about her survival and courage through the war and efforts to escape.
Ung said out of the nine members in her family, only five survived the war, including herself. “My brother had to choose one sibling to take on the boat with him to America in order to escape the war. I was the lucky child,” Ung stated.
“I didn’t want to leave my siblings or Cambodia, but my brother convinced me we would all meet again. It would be fifteen years before we reunited.”
Furthermore, Ung said she started a new life with her brother and the Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Holy Family Church when they arrived in Essex, Vermont after a long journey at sea. “We arrived in Essex in June 1980. It was so nice and new, but freezing,” Ung said. “I was not use to the weather being that cold. I am use to 110 degrees of humidity.”
Ung attended school in America and said she started acting like an American, but with the soldiers and the past always in her dreams and in the back of her mind.
“I was suffering post-traumatic stress and needed to get the words out,” she said.
“When I couldn’t speak the words, I could write. I have kept a journal since high school.” Ung said someone presented her with Viktor E. Frankl’s 1946 book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
She said it changed her life. In 1995 Ung said she reunited with her family in Cambodia and she was amazed at all the tragedies around her. “It was so nice to be there with them, but so sad all at once,” she said. Ung is a national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World.
She has also written, “Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind.” Within it she writes about her changes to life without her family and about living in America. KSC student, Megan Cowic said, “Her presentation was amazing, it made me want to give her a hug.” Loung Ung’s lecture was sponsored by the KSC’s Woman’s Culture Club and the Northeast Cultural Co-op in Amherst, New Hampshire.
“Peace is not an automatic, it all matters. We provide a safe place here, hopefully it will ripple to another place,” concluded Ung.
Meridith Shepherd can be contacted at mshepherd@keeneequinox.com
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