Lulu in the Sky - by Loung Ung (Paperback)

About the Book

Concluding the trilogy that started with the bestselling memoir "First They Killed My Father," Ung describes her college experience and her first steps into adulthood, revealing her struggle to reconcile with her past while moving forward towards happiness.

Book Synopsis

Concluding the trilogy that started with the bestselling memoir First They Killed My Father, Loung Ung describes her college experience and her first steps into adulthood, revealing her struggle to reconcile with her past while moving forward towards happiness. After the violence of the Khmer Rouge and the difficult assimilation experience of a refugee, Loung's daily struggle to keep darkness, anger, and depression at bay will finally find two unexpected allies: the empowering call of activism, and the redemptive power of love. Lulu in the Sky is the story of Loung's journey to a Cambodian village to reconnect with her mother's spirit; to a vocation that will literally allow her to heal the landscape of her birth; and to the transformative influence of a supportive marriage to a loving man.

From the Back Cover

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.

Review Quotes

"A riveting memoir...an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore." - San Francisco Chronicle
"[Ung] tells her stories straightforwardly, vividly, and without any strenuous effort to explicate their importance, allowing the stories themselves to create their own impact." - New York Times
"A unique glimpse into America's "melting pot"--a melting pot born of indescribable suffering but brimming with irrepressible life." - Samantha Power, author of "A Problem from Hell" America and the Age of Genocide
"At once elegiac and clear-eyed, this moving volume is a tribute to the path not taken." - Vogue
"Both stories -- Loung's, told in her own voice, and Chou's, narrated in the third person -- are inherently fascinating and are recounted with a vividness and immediacy that make them even more so....Written with an engaging vigor and directness, Lucky Child is an unforgettable portrait of resilience and largeness of spirit." - Los Angeles Times
"Ung's writing is clear-headed, honest and compelling; much of what she describes, from the brutalities she and her family endured to the ways it steered her adult life, is deeply affecting." - Kirkus
"Loung Ung makes Lulu in the Sky shimmer with renewal after the Cambodian killing fields" - Cleveland Plain Dealer
"You can't help liking and admiring this young woman. . . . [A] lively, humorous account . . . when you arrive at the hard-earned happy ending, it's with a sigh of deep relief." - Washington Post