A review by lauramiserez
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

dark emotional informative sad tense fast-paced

5.0

I always struggle with rating memoirs because what business do I have judging how someone else captures their own story, especially one as traumatic as this one. That said, I usually end up rating memoirs based on how likely it is I’ll still think of the story in 5, 15, or 50 years. Using that metric, I’d give this book 6 stars if Goodreads would allow it. This book is not very long, but it manages to say so much about the human cost of ideological war. We look at genocide in terms of numbers, and this book shows how much humanity and devastation accompanies each single death that contributes to those large numbers. I think it should be required reading for anyone who hasn’t had to live through this kind of instability and violence. 
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