An Interview with a Former Khmer Refugee, New Yorker

Sokunthary Svay is a former Khmer refugee. She grew up in New York and currently lives in Queens, and works as a college teacher, composer, and writer. Her mother and father are originally from Cambodia. She was born in Thailand at the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp and later traveled to the United States, where she grew up in the Bronx, New York City. Pushing past the struggles with education and fitting in as a Cambodian American, she has managed to become a well-established writer in the Cambodian community and is a doctoral candidate in English. She has published two books, “Apsara in New York,” and “Put It On Record.” Here, she discusses her experiences as a young Khmer teenager in West Farms and her Cambodian culture.

What was it like being one of the only Cambodians growing up in the Bronx during your childhood? How did you feel?

I felt very disconnected. I knew that I was connecting to people via our locality, and we were united as people living in the Bronx together. But, I didn't feel like I was connected via the experience of being Cambodian, partly because I didn’t know what it meant, you know, aside from watching my parents, and then whatever bits I could pick up from books or media.

Do you recall what it was like to get along with other Asians who weren’t the same ethnicity as you?

It was a struggle because I couldn't find other Cambodians; the next group I found was Chinese people because they were abundant, you know. And I thought, you know, if I'm around people who look like, similar to me, then maybe I can feel like I'm part of something. But I noticed some of the differences; they would speak in Cantonese, and I would feel kind of left out. There was nobody who even understood where Cambodia was. So even in that group, I felt kind of alone.

Can you describe what your living situation was like with your family and your apartment at the time?

Well, we lived in two places when I was growing up. The first one was the five of us in a one-bedroom apartment. The sleeping arrangements would change; my mother and father would sleep on a pull-out couch in the living room, and me and my siblings would sleep in the bedroom. Imagine having just this one bedroom and the living room. There were a lot of roaches. They were everywhere, and I never got over that. But I got better at killing them.

Then we moved to the projects, where I finally got to have my own room. Even though it was a three-bedroom apartment, it was a very small three-bedroom apartment. It was public housing, so, you know, not the best reputation. People were like, “Why are you moving west? You’re moving the wrong way.”

There was another Cambodian family there, but we looked lighter-skinned and more East Asian than them. I felt that I stood out, and not in a good way. I didn’t like walking in my neighborhood. I knew I wanted to get out of there, and I knew there had to be something beyond that.

I know that you felt divided from other people because you were Cambodian. But at the same time, did you have a significant connection to your culture that accounted for that feeling of separation? Or did your parents not teach you about your culture at all?

There was no direct teaching. I think part of it, perhaps, was that my parents didn’t know how to do that. Every now and then, they'd say, “This means this.” But there wasn't enough of that. I think that's what was lacking; I didn't get that transfer of information. No one ever explained anything to me; I just had to watch and pick it up. It was like osmosis, just learning it by being around it. Nobody teaches you, you just hope they tell you someday. You learn from books. For some reason, Khmer parents didn't want to talk directly to their kids. I think their concern was survival, their concern was that they could pay rent, that they could feed us, and that we did well in school. It wasn’t about passing culture on, but they didn't want us to lose the language of course.

Do you think that lack of communication had anything to do with them wanting you to assimilate?

You know, I don't recall much of the “You cannot speak Khmer”: they never did that. When we went to elders' homes, they were like “Oh, you can't even speak Khmer” or like, if you don't greet them properly and say jum-reap-suor (hello) or sohk-sabbay (how are you) and all that stuff, there was real shaming from the kids. We lost everything, our language and our culture when we came here. I still knew Khmer, and I still do, but it's just been dormant. Meanwhile, there's my brother, and I think birth order and where he was born affected his relationship with Khmer. When we were younger, we’d spoken Khmer to each other but not a lot, it was like Khmer English. Like, “Pass me the phuoy (blanket)”.

It wasn't until I got away from my parents or went to Cambodia, that I was thinking about language. Especially when I started my master's in language and literacy, I started to think about language in an intellectual way. Like removing it from the emotional-personal side of the shame that comes from it. I started thinking about Khmer but with an English mind. I started thinking about it, almost in a scientific way. A lot of the Khmers I have met that are your generation and a little older, a lot of them are really uncomfortable with it(speaking Khmer), so, you know, we are just kind of happy that we can all be vulnerable together.