With Womens Work: Sokunthary Svay - Re-member(ing) Khmer

Thursday, February 25th, at 8pm EST, ISSUE is pleased to stream Re-member(ing) Khmer, a new work by writer Sokunthary Svay. The piece is part of the With Womens Work series, commissioning artists to interpret and respond to scores included in Womens Work, a magazine first edited and self-published in 1975 by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood.

Notes from Sokunthary Svay on Re-member(ing) Khmer:

In the Cambodian diaspora, linguistic proficiency is associated with being truly “Khmer.” Yet it’s difficult to quantify that proficiency and I wonder if it’s actually achievable. I question the relationship of language as proximity to identity. Many of us are shamed because of our, often unintended, shifts away from the first tongue. How do we build this language again from the gap in our memories, whether personal, historical, or generational? As someone whose ability fluctuates in speaking the heritage tongue, a COVID summer spent learning Khmer literacy forced me to think about my linguistic relationship to my body, while gaining a new understanding as I painstakingly taught myself Khmer script. I search for my missing part by decoding language & my memory of it.

The piece responds to scores by artist and composer Mieko Shiomi included in Womens Work Volume #1, 1975.

Sokunthary Svay is a Khmer writer from the Bronx. She is a founding member of the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association (CALAA). She has received fellowships from the American Opera Project, Poets House, Willow Books, and CUNY. Her first collection of poetry, Apsara in New York, is available from Willow Books. Her opera collaboration with composer Liliya Ugay, “Woman of Letters,” received its premiere in January 2020 at the Kennedy Center. She teaches English at Queens College, CUNY.