Olivia: The Khmer Rouge killed nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population in four years. That's almost two million people. But the real horror isn't in that number. Jackson: Whoa, that’s a heavy start. Where are you going with this? Olivia: It's in the details. It's in realizing that the first step to genocide isn't always a gunshot. Sometimes, it’s as simple as demanding everyone wear the same color clothes. Jackson: Okay, that reframes it completely. It’s not just a statistic; it’s a process. A deliberate, step-by-step dismantling of a world. Olivia: Exactly. And no book I've ever read captures that process from the inside like First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung. Jackson: I’ve heard about this one. It’s incredibly well-regarded, but also known for being absolutely gut-wrenching. The film adaptation by Angelina Jolie brought it to a huge audience, too. Olivia: It is. And what makes it so powerful is that Ung made a very specific choice. Growing up as a refugee in the U.S., people would tell her she was lucky she was so young during the war, that she probably wouldn't remember it. She wrote this entire memoir from her five-year-old perspective to prove them wrong—to show that a child’s trauma is not only real, but seared into memory. Jackson: That’s a powerful motivation. It’s not just telling a story; it’s a rebuttal. So, where does this story begin? What was the world like for this little girl before it was all torn apart?

Olivia: It begins in a place of vibrant life and relative privilege. The Ung family lived in a large, modern apartment in Phnom Penh in April 1975. Loung describes a bustling city, the smell of street food, the sounds of her siblings playing. Her father, Pa, was a high-ranking military police captain, and her mother, Ma, was beautiful and respected. They were a close, loving family of nine. Jackson: So they had status. They were comfortable. Olivia: Very. Loung even has this sharp, childlike observation: "In Phnom Penh, it seems that the more money you have, the more stairs you have to climb to your home." They lived on the fourth floor. They had a car, a television, servants. This wasn't a family on the margins; they were at the center of a thriving urban life. Jackson: Which makes the fall that much more dramatic. How does it happen? Olivia: Suddenly. One day, Loung is playing hopscotch, and the next, Khmer Rouge soldiers, young men in black pajamas, are rolling into the city. At first, people cheer, thinking the war is over. But Pa, her father, is immediately apprehensive. He sees their sandals made from car tires and says, "It shows that these people are destroyers of things." Jackson: Chilling. He saw it coming. Olivia: He did. Within hours, the soldiers are banging on doors, forcing everyone out of their homes. They use a lie—that the Americans are about to bomb the city and everyone must evacuate for three days for their own safety. Jackson: Just three days. A simple, believable lie to engineer a mass exodus. Olivia: Precisely. The Ung family is forced to abandon their apartment, their belongings, their entire life. They pile into an old truck, but it soon runs out of gas. And then they join the endless river of people, walking. This is where the systematic dehumanization begins. The first thing to go is status. Their car, their home—all gone. The second is wealth. Jackson: How so? Olivia: There's this one unforgettable scene. They've been walking for days, and Loung needs to use the bathroom. There's no toilet paper, of course. So she asks her mother. Ma comes back with a handful of crisp, new Cambodian bank notes. She tells Loung, "Use it, it is of no use to us anymore." Jackson: Wow. Using money as toilet paper. That’s not just about currency becoming worthless; it’s a profound act of psychological warfare, isn't it? It’s telling people that the entire system you believed in, the value you held, is now garbage. Olivia: It's the ultimate symbol of the old world's collapse. And it’s followed by the stripping of all personal possessions. Soldiers at checkpoints take their watches, their jewelry. Anything that marks them as individuals from the city, as "capitalists," is confiscated. Jackson: So the regime is creating a blank slate by force. Erase the past, erase individuality. Olivia: And then they erase identity itself. When they finally arrive in a village called Ro Leap, the family is designated as "new people"—the city dwellers, the educated, the tainted ones. The "base people" are the rural peasants, the supposedly pure foundation of this new agrarian society. The new people are given less food, harder work, and are under constant suspicion. Jackson: A caste system created overnight. Olivia: Exactly. And the final step is erasing their appearance. The village chief announces that all colorful, Western-style clothes are forbidden because they "corrupt the mind." Everyone must wear black. Loung watches as soldiers throw her favorite red dress, a dress her mother made for her, onto a bonfire with everyone else's clothes. Jackson: The red dress. That’s so specific and heartbreaking. It’s not just a piece of clothing; it’s a memory, a piece of her mother's love, her childhood. Olivia: And as she watches it burn, she understands. The goal is to make everyone look the same, think the same, and belong only to the Angkar, the faceless "Organization" that is the Khmer Rouge. They've taken her home, her wealth, her clothes. The only thing left is her family. And, of course, the Angkar comes for that next. Jackson: It’s so methodical. It’s like a checklist for breaking a society. You take away their homes, their money, their individuality, and finally, their connections to each other. Olivia: And it’s all seen through the eyes of a five, then six-year-old girl, who is just trying to understand why the world has suddenly become so cruel. She doesn't grasp the political ideology, only the visceral results: the hunger, the fear, and the loss.

Jackson: It's one thing to survive that kind of systemic cruelty. It's another thing entirely to think about what it does to a child's mind. How does a little girl even begin to process this? Olivia: She doesn't, not in the way an adult would. The book’s most powerful, and I think most controversial, aspect is how it charts her internal transformation. She doesn't just endure; she changes. Her grief and fear slowly curdle into something else. Jackson: Something harder. Olivia: Much harder. It begins with the losses. First, her father is taken away. Two soldiers come to the hut with another lie, that they need his help with a stuck wagon. He knows it’s a lie. He says his goodbyes to the children, and Loung never sees him again. He was executed because of his past as a government official. Jackson: And the family is left without its protector. Olivia: Completely exposed. Then her older sister, Keav, dies of dysentery in a teenage labor camp, writhing in pain in a filthy infirmary because she was denied proper care. The family isn't even allowed to have her body for a proper burial. Jackson: My god. One by one. Olivia: And the final, devastating blow comes when her mother, Ma, makes an impossible choice. Fearing that the soldiers will come for the rest of them, she decides to split the children up. She tells them, "If we stay together, we will die together." She sends her older children, Kim and Chou, away. And then she forces Loung, now seven, to leave, to pretend to be an orphan and go to a work camp. Jackson: She sends her seven-year-old daughter away, alone? To save her? Olivia: It’s an act of desperate, heartbreaking love. Loung is left with only her youngest sister, Geak, and her mother. But soon after, soldiers come and take Ma and Geak away. They are marched to a field and, Loung imagines, executed. At seven years old, she has lost everyone. Jackson: I can’t even fathom that. What happens to a person, a child, when their entire world is murdered in front of them? Olivia: Rage is what happens. This is where the book pivots. Loung is sent to a training camp for child soldiers. And here, the Khmer Rouge propaganda machine goes into overdrive. They teach the children to hate the "Youns," their term for the Vietnamese. They are taught to use rifles, to set traps, to kill. Jackson: They weaponize the orphans they've created. Olivia: And Loung embraces it. She channels all the pain, all the grief for her lost family, into a single, burning point of hatred. She has nightmares, not of being hunted, but of becoming the hunter. She dreams of killing Khmer Rouge soldiers. There's a quote where she thinks to herself, "Someday, I will kill them all. My hatred for them is boundless." Jackson: This is what's so unsettling and brilliant about the book. Her survival isn't this pure, heroic act of passive resilience. It's fueled by a desire for vengeance. Is the book arguing that to survive pure evil, you have to embrace a piece of it yourself? Olivia: I think it presents that as a psychological reality. Her hatred becomes her armor. It’s what keeps her going. She learns to suppress her emotions, to be tough, to fight. It’s a brutal form of adaptation. And this is something that has sparked debate. Some critics have questioned the historical accuracy, wondering if a child could remember events with such clarity. Jackson: Right, the adult author writing from a child’s memory. How do you navigate that as a reader? Olivia: Ung herself, and many scholars, argue that the book is a testimony of emotional truth. The trauma itself creates these vivid, fragmented, but incredibly powerful memories. The point isn't whether every detail is journalistically perfect; the point is to convey the feeling of living through it. And that feeling is one of innocence being systematically burned away and replaced with rage. Jackson: So the rage is a survival mechanism. It’s the only logical response to an illogical, evil world. Olivia: It’s her fuel. And it’s what ultimately carries her through the end of the regime, the Vietnamese invasion, and her eventual escape with her brother Meng to a refugee camp in Thailand, and finally, to America. But she carries that rage with her.

Jackson: So, when you put it all together, the book isn't just a historical account of the Cambodian genocide. It’s a dual autopsy—of a society being murdered, and of a child's innocence being replaced by something much, much harder. Olivia: Exactly. It forces us to look past the black-and-white narratives of good versus evil. We rightly condemn the unspeakable violence of the Khmer Rouge. But the book shows that for Loung, the will to be violent, the burning rage she cultivates, is precisely what helps her survive. It complicates our idea of what a 'victim' or a 'survivor' is supposed to look or feel like. Jackson: There’s no neat, tidy hero's journey here. It’s messy and painful and morally complex. She survives, but she's not the same person. She's been fundamentally remade by the horror. Olivia: And that’s the lasting power of First They Killed My Father. It doesn't just show you what happened; it makes you feel the psychological cost of it. Loung Ung eventually channeled that rage into activism, becoming a spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. She found a way to use her story for healing, not just for herself, but for her country. But the book reminds us that the scars of that transformation never truly disappear. Jackson: It’s a testament that surviving is one thing, but healing is another journey entirely. Olivia: It leaves you with a really heavy, but important question. In the face of absolute, unimaginable horror, what parts of your own humanity would you be forced to sacrifice just to live? Jackson: That's a question that will stick with me for a long time. It’s a brutal, necessary book. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. What part of Loung's story resonated most with you, or challenged you the most? Find us on our socials and share your reflections. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.