Learning History From a Memoir Instead of a Textbook

 So far, First They Killed My Father is an intimate and personal account that gives the reader a sense of what it was like to be in Cambodia during the 1970s.When I picked up the memoir with a title as unequivocal as First They Killed My Father, I definitely knew it wasn't going to be funny or comical. Still, I wanted to find out more about the history of the Cambodian civil war that cost the lives of so many people. After I chose the book, I was worried the memoir would be a dry, historical, and objective account of the Cambodian Genocide during the 1970s. Instead, Loung Ung shares the personal and brutal story of what happened to her through the eyes of the innocent child that she was at the time, which makes it so different from other memoirs written by adults who understand the situation.

        The dominant tone of the author throughout the first fifty pages is nostalgic. The author is apparently homesick: she misses Phnom Penh, where she was free, happy, and safe. She is also apprehensive and baffled because she doesn't know where and why her family is leaving and whether she will ever come back to Phnom Penh. Her family is not giving her answers, so she just has to follow her parents and worry to herself.

Collecting My Final Reflections

        The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass' ending does not seem particularly new because so much of it has been incorporated into what I had already known about Frederick Douglass and the abolition of slavery. I had known that Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist and I had viewed abolition as something that was obvious and incontestable. However, I realized that this narrative must have been a huge revelation when it was first published, because at that time slaveowners were blind towards slavery's evils and had a reasonable justification for slavery: religion. We easily tend to deceive ourselves into believing that what is accepted by the general population as normal behavior is also justifiably correct. We rarely question our customs, and even if they are contested, they become well justified and defended because everyone follows those customs. Slaveholders must have considered slavery as something totally acceptable because slavery was legitimate and reasonable back then.

      The ending also gave me a feeling that the story was incomplete with many gaps. However, I understood that Douglass deliberately left out that information to protect the escape of other slaves: "Were I to give a minute statement of all the facts, it is not only possible, but quite probable, that others would thereby be involved in the most embarrassing difficulties" (Page 99). After all, the title of the book is Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, not Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an Escaped Slave. The narrative ends at the right time, when Douglass is no longer a slave (although, legally, he was) and enjoys his new freedom. In fact, that missing chunk of the other part of his life motivated me to research and learn more about Douglass' escape and his accomplishments as an abolitionist.

     Despite the missing details, I was very satisfied with Douglass' triumph of finding his voice and passion as a public speaker, anti abolitionist, and an author. Initially, Douglass honestly confesses, "I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down" (Page 112). But eventually, he frees his mind and burden as he states, "...but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable ease" (Page 112). For Douglass, freedom was not only his escape from slavery, but also an opportunity to write and share his philosophy and experience. Achieving freedom through writing was his way of thinking and an attitude towards the rest of his life. His freedom connects with that of Darin Strauss from Half a Life because Strauss also starts his therapy and freedom through writing his book and sharing his story of the accident. 

fetter: a restraint on
 someone's freedom

dilapidated: in a state
of despair and ruin

insurrection: violent uprising
against an authority