Amnesty International's quartlerly magazine recently featured a short mention of Luong Ung's Lucky Child, the sequel to her autobiography First They Killed My Father. I read the latter, but didn't realize autobiographies had sequels (Roald Dahl's comic recollections notwithstanding!). Her latest book apparently details her experiences as a Cambodian refugee in Vermont, and contrasts them with her sister's experiences as the child left to live in rural poverty under the Khmer Rouge.
First They Killed My Father told a story similar to Kien Nguyen's The Unwanted: children in Asia survive war, flee oppressive political regimes and then live the quintessential
third-world-rags-to-American -riches Dream. (They're well-written and certainly heart-wrenching in terms of subject matter, but these autobiographies always end with the final arrival in America! The reader is left to wonder why, just because the authors are no longer persecuted as they were in the communist regimes they fled, that their struggles as immigrants and refugees in the United States are not equally worth telling.)
Though I haven't read it, Ung's newest book suggests it is another Pudd'nhead Wilson tale: the accident of environment determines a child's life. And if Twain wrote about a central unbridgeable gulf of the 19th century (namely slavery) in Pudd'nhead Wilson, Ung uses her life to illustrate some central ideological conflicts of the 20th century (namely communism and third world development).
Might be worth a read.
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