DC: You and your family have a harrowing story migrating from Cambodia to the United States. Describe what you endured during your journey?
MS: My mom went through a lot and saw a lot of horrible things. She had to leave a lot behind and there was a lot of sadness. She lost her husband and her two eldest children, and she had to run through the jungle, avoiding Khmer Rouge soldiers and protecting her other 3 children while she was pregnant with me. When she made it to the refugee camp, she had to wait with 4 children including me to see if someone would sponsor us from the US to come to this country. I was born in that refugee camp, and most of my early childhood years were spent there. I don’t remember much, but I know that it was very hard just to find food.
DC: Explain the educational and nutritional challenges you experienced as a young child being new to Chicago.
MS: When we arrived in Chicago I was enrolled in school without knowing how to speak English and without help from the teachers who didn’t know how to communicate with me. I was expected to go every day and not cause trouble, but because I was so different the other people in my class treated me like I was an alien. I didn’t have many friends at first, and my mother didn’t know how to get food for me and my siblings all the time. The donated food that we received didn’t come with instructions we could understand, so imagine trying to figure out how to eat Macaroni and Cheese without knowing what the yellow powder was and how the noodles were supposed to be cooked. My mom had to work very hard at menial jobs like cleaning houses and sewing hospital gowns just to make enough money to pay for food. At school, eventually I had a counselor who discovered I could understand some French that my mother taught me, and she communicated with me through sign language and eventually helped me learn to read and write English. It was hard getting through school every day with bullies and teachers who didn’t understand me, but I pushed through it.