Cambodia vs. America First They Killed My Father By: Loung Ung Jenna Schatzmann P.7

Summary First they killed my father by Loung Ung follows a 5 year old girl, Loung, and her family in Phnom Penh, Cambodia as they live a comfortable life at first. Their whole world gets turned upside down as the Khmer Rouge army forces the family to leave their home. They spend a great amount of time suffering and traveling until it got even worse. The whole family was separated and sent off to work camps where not all of the family survived these terrors. Loung survived this brutal journey with very little of her family but has this heart throbbing story to share with the world.

Thesis Cambodia and the United States can be compared to each other because although they mainly have differences, they also have similarities.

“The wide boulevards sing with the buzz of motorcycle engines, squeaky bicycles, and, for those wealthy enough to afford them, small cars” (Ung 1). Phnom Penh seems like a place that does not make a lot of money compared to the United States. In Cambodia, few people have cars but in the United States, a great amount of the population owns a car or two and even more than that.

“We don’t have traffic lights on our streets; instead, policemen stand on raised metal boxes, in the middle of the intersections directing traffic” (Ung 1). In the United States, almost any state you travel to will have traffic lights directing traffic at intersections. In Cambodia, it’s seems as if they don’t have traffic lights anywhere. They probably can’t afford to have them.

“While Pa was a monk, he happened to walk across a stream where Ma was gathering water with her jug” (Ung 5). A majority of the United States religion is Christianity and there are rarely every Buddhists. which is quite different from Cambodia where it is the other way around. Also, in the United States most houses have running water and don’t have to go to streams for their water unlike a lot of families in Cambodia.

“ That was before Ma explained to me that in Cambodia people don’t outright compliment a child. They don’t want to call attention to the child” (Ung 6) In Cambodia, people don’t give attention to children which is very different from the United States. A majority of the attention given by Americans is given to children, constantly complimenting them.

“I watch in fascination as children with oily black hair, wearing old, dirty clothes run up to our cyclo in their bare feet” (Ung 8). Children in Cambodia seem to not be taken care of as much as they are in the United States. In American, all children have somewhere to live even if they don’t have families. They have food, clean clothes, and shoes to wear.

“Because we do not have a refrigerator, Ma shops every morning” (Ung 9). In Cambodia, most families seem to be lacking basic appliances such as a refrigerator. In America, most every home has some sort of refrigerator so they can save food and don’t have to go shopping everyday.

“He told me that during his life as a monk, wherever he walked he had to carry a broom and dustpan to sweep the path in front of him so as not to kill any living things by stepping on them”(Ung 12). In the United States, citizens don’t take their religions as seriously as some families do in Cambodia. Most Americans don’t care where they walk and what they step on as long as they get to their desired destination.

“No, there two political parties run the country. One side is called the Democrats and the other the Republicans”(Ung 12). Cambodians and Americans share political parties because most people are either Democratic or Republican. In the United States, however, they don’t separate the parties as much as they do in Cambodia.

“Many of his colleagues’ daughters have been harassed on the streets or even kidnapped”(Ung 13). Cambodia and America share the fact that girls get harassed when they are out. Unfortunately, it is dangerous for young girls to be unattended in the streets or anywhere they go because harmful things could happen to them.

“And while many people on our street do not have a telephone, and though I am not allowed to use one, we have two” (Ung 15). In the United States a majority of the population owns a cell phone or some sort of telephone. In Cambodia, it is rare to find a family with a telephone.

“It is believed that men who wear their hair long must have something to hide” (Ung 18). In Cambodia, men and women have to look a certain way to fit in with the rest of the population. In the United States, people can look how they want and don’t have to fit in with the “average” crowd by appearance.

“Along with our other material possessions, our Mazda tells everyone we are from the middle class” (Ung 20). In Cambodia, people only but what they can afford which is the same as the United States. Just by looking at what someone owns, you can tell if they are high or low class.

“In Cambodia we have only two seasons, dry and rain” (Ung 23). In the United States, there are four seasons, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, each of them containing different weather. In Cambodia they only have two seasons which limits their weather to only two different types.

“Krang Truop is a small and dusty village surrounded by rice fields as far as the eye can see” (Ung 38). In the United States, someone could rarely ever find a village. The farming in United States also differs from that in Cambodia. The main things Americans farm are vegetables and fruits, not rice.

“Now the villagers have to seek permission for the simplest human desires- to have family members live with them or to leave the village to visit another area” (Ung 39). In Cambodia in this village, people don’t have the freedom to do things like they do in the United States. As long as your actions obey the law, you can do anything you please.

“All around us, groups of five to ten people sit together and quietly consume just enough food to live for another day” (Ung 96). In Cambodia, many people don’t even have enough food to eat so they can survive. A lot are just barely getting enough. In America, most every human has enough to eat each day but not all of them do.