What is Jewelry?

In First They Killed My Father, jewelry is frequently mentioned as an object the Ung family uses to barter for food and other scarce resources. For example, Ma attempts to secure some meat for Geak by offering up her gold, yet her exchange goes awry when she is caught by the soldiers who take her jewelry and leave her with nothing. Jewelry is forbidden and is thought of as a vain luxury by the soldiers, who seize it for themselves from all those families lucky enough to have owned it in the first place. In that regard, jewelry is also a significant object in the book because it separates the Ung family from many of those living around them who never had enough money to even amass a collection of such precious items. The family is therefore lucky in that their prior wealth still helps them survive the war better than some others because they could trade the jewelry they used to value for things they need in order to survive, like food.