To celebrate this release, the first two memoirs in Loung Ung’s trilogy, the bestseller First They Killed My Father and the continuing story in Lucky Child, will also be on tour.
About Lulu in the Sky
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 17, 2012)
Concluding the trilogy that started with her bestselling memoir, First They Killed My Father, Loung Ung illuminates her struggle to reconcile with her past while moving forward toward happiness.
When readers first met Loung Ung in her critically acclaimed memoir First They Killed My Father, she was a young, innocent child in Cambodia. But forced by the Khmer Rouge into the life of a child soldier, she soon found herself locked in a desperate struggle for survival in Cambodia’s notorious killing fields. In Lucky Child, her life took a turn. As a refugee in Vermont, she grappled with post-traumatic stress, cultural assimilation roadblocks, and the abandonment of her sister in Cambodia.
Now, Lulu in the Sky tells the next chapter in Ung’s life, revealing her daily struggle to keep darkness and depression at bay while she attends college and falls in love with Mark Priemer, a Midwestern archetype of American optimism. Lulu in the Sky is the story of Ung’s tentative steps into love, activism, and marriage—a journey that takes her to a Cambodian village to reconnect with her mother’s spirit, to a vocation focused on healing the landscape of her birth, and to the patience and unconditional support of a very special man.
About First They Killed My Father
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung’s family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung’s powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.
About Lucky Child
After enduring years of hunger, deprivation, and devastating loss at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, ten-year-old Loung Ung became the “lucky child,” the sibling chosen to accompany her eldest brother to America while her one surviving sister and two brothers remained behind. In this poignant and elegiac memoir, Loung recalls her assimilation into an unfamiliar new culture while struggling to overcome dogged memories of violence and the deep scars of war. In alternating chapters, she gives voice to Chou, the beloved older sister whose life in war-torn Cambodia so easily could have been hers. Highlighting the harsh realities of chance and circumstance in times of war as well as in times of peace, Lucky Child is ultimately a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and to the salvaging strength of family bonds.
About Loung Ung
An author, lecturer, and activist, Loung Ung has advocated for equality, human rights, and justice in her native land and worldwide for more than fifteen years. Ung lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband.
Luong’s Tour Stops
Thursday, April 19th: Knitting and Sundries (First They Killed My Father)
Monday, April 23rd: Just Joanna (Lucky Child)
Tuesday, April 24th: The Lost Entwife (First They Killed My Father)
Wednesday, April 25th: Everyday I Write the Book (Lucky Child)
Thursday, April 26th: Book Dilettante (Lucky Child)
Friday, April 27th: ricklibrarian (Lulu in the Sky)
Monday, April30th: Broken Teepee (First They Killed My Father)
Tuesday, May 1st: Lit and Life (Lulu in the Sky)
Wednesday, May 2nd: Cold Read (Lulu in the Sky)
Monday, May 7th: Veronica MD (First They Killed My Father)
Wednesday, May 9th: The Road to Here (Lucky Child)
Thursday, May 10th: Book Dilettante (Lulu in the Sky)
Wednesday, May 16th: the state that i am in (First They Killed My Father)
Thursday, May 17th: The Feminist Texican [Reads] (First They Killed My Father)
Friday, May 18th: Books in the City (Lucky Child)
Thursday, May 3rd: EmSun (First They Killed My Father)