I think every person has a unique story to tell and we each have the different life events that happen to us and sometimes we may feel sympathetic toward a certain aspect of that life event.

Sometimes I fantasize about learning to write in Khmer. Because if I could write in Khmer, my perspective would be very different, because I'm both an outsider and insider and I see the writing in a different way. My description would be different from, say, a local writer.

I've been coming to Cambodia off and on, six months of the year usually.

I have a great advantage: I write from the perspective of my own voice. I'm not copying anyone's voice. It's my voice. I have the advantage of being a writer of English as a second language.

I read a lot when I was in school in the United States, and even though writing in English is very difficult for me, I wrote in journals.

In This Body Mystery, even though it was written in the voice of people with HIV/AIDS, it's about how people come to accept their fate and their sickness. It's about accepting the way your life is.

It's like you're organically developing yourself, moving out, metamorphosing into other forms depending on where you are, what you're doing at the time, how you want to play on things.