This is my first collaboration [with Mary Hamill] so I'm going to learn how it's going to work.

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.

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.

When you're reading from a different language that's different from your own, it's not the same as being fluent.

The family I grew up in had three generations of widows.

Every day you are bombarded by so many different things. When you sit down to process everything, it can become interesting visually. You can incorporate a lot of those things that you internalize.

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