Lulu in the Sky

March 15, 2012
The third memoir in a trilogy about processing and moving past the trauma of surviving the Cambodian genocide. Activist Ung (Lucky Child, 2006, etc.) wrote two previous well-received chronicles of her stint as a child soldier serving the Khmer Rouge. She lost most of her family to the killing fields, built a new life as a refugee in Vermont and reunited with a sister who was abandoned in Cambodia. This book chronicles the next chapter of her life, the decade that began with her time in college. At age 20 she fell in love with Mark, a wholesome, optimistic Midwesterner. The author gives a significant amount of attention to their courtship and eventual successful marriage. Even the magic of their romance, however, couldn't negate her almost-daily struggles with depression and residual post-traumatic stress. Mark's sunniness, which originally drew her to him, became a source of resentment, but she ultimately recognized as positive her husband's capacity to love without fear. The title is a combination of Ung's nickname, Lulu, and the Beatles' song, and its implicit optimism reflects a theme running through the author's life. "People will always die," an aunt told her, "but we have to continue to live. Live, eat, and love." After college, she and Mark moved to Washington, D.C., where she began her lifelong work as an activist. The book closes with another return trip to Cambodia in 2000. Ung's writing is clear-headed, honest and compelling; much of what she describes, from the brutalities she and her family endured to the ways it steered her adult life, is deeply affecting.

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November 1, 2011

A refugee from Cambodia's killing fields, Ung concludes the heartrending trilogy begun with First They Killed My Father, a 2001 American Library Association Asian/Pacific American Award winner, with this account of her move into adulthood. You'll be hearing more about her; she's contributed her story to 1010, a documentary film conceived and directed by Academy Award-nominated director Richard E. Robbins that chronicles the lives of ten girls from ten countries.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2012
Ung's award-winning First They Killed My Father (2000) describes her childhood during the horror of the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge. Lucky Child (2005) is about her struggle as a refugee survivor in the U.S. Now, in what she calls part memoir and part creative nonfiction, she brings the two places together. Living in Vermont, she falls in love with midwesterner Mark Priemer, but how can she commit when she lives with trauma and guilt? Portrayed as a totally perfect partner, he understands her constant shame and anger. Haunted by mass graves and the family she left behind, she cannot fight her demons, so she fights him. Now, with Mark's support, she is a political activist focused on the movement to ban land mines, which still take a horrific toll, and she has returned to Cambodia more than 30 times. With a small wedding photo on the cover, the love story shows her hard-won healing, even as it never denies the horror. Link this with Holocaust survivor accounts in which the trauma creates no pretty pictures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)