I'm very connected to the story, the history, and the trauma people experience.

I think every writer has their waves of inspiration and their ways of doing things. But writing is very difficult for me. It's something I haven't practiced as diligently as my visual art. I've been doing visual art because I think it's easier for me to construct, whereas words are very difficult.

When I hear Khmer poets, when they recite their poems, I know what they're talking about, I get it right away.

Some people have witnessed the killing of their husbands, or they survived other horrific things. My sister is a widow but her husband was killed after the Khmer Rouge. There are different periods in which violence has occurred, and differences in how these women became widowed and how they survived afterwards.

I'm very connected to the story, the history, and the trauma people experience.

I started to paint in the year 2000. I never thought of going to an art school, even though I loved art.

Even though I'm not privileged in the money world, I'm privileged in other ways: I had greater access to education, I can travel, etc. It's the same with writing: the freedom to move in and out of different places, of different realms of existence, of different life forms.