The Afterlife Of Memory: Postmemory, Genocide And Childhood Trauma In First They Killed My Father

Abstract

This paper studies Loung Ung’s memoir First They Killed My Father through the lens of Marianne Hirsch’s postmemory. Loung Ung reconstructs her childhood experiences during the Cambodian genocide in an emotionally intense narrative. Through a child’s eye-view, this memoir offers a visceral window into the chaos and trauma of surviving a mass violence. Although Loung Ung is a direct survivor of the Cambodian genocide and not a descendant of one, her memoir exhibits certain structural and emotional characteristics associated with Hirsch’s postmemory. This paper argues that Ung’s narrative blurs the distinction between lived memory and postmemory, showing how her traumatic past is reconstructed and transmitted through affect, imagination and retrospective voice. It reveals how postmemory suits not only the descendants of survivors, but those whose trauma began even before language or comprehension could fully capture it.