WEBVTT

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Good evening.

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Thank you so much
for being here.

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I'm so honored to give my first
public reading here in Tucson.

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I'm just going to make
sure I have a timer going.

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So I'm so happy that
the books are here.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So you get the books
before anybody else.

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This cover is very
special to me.

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The book is dedicated
to my grandmother,

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and her name was Bun Em,
and she was a weaver.

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And when she came to
this country as a refugee

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after the genocide that took
place under the Khmer Rouge

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regime in the '70s, she
was really depressed.

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She had lost a
lot of loved ones,

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including her husband
and her eldest son.

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And she was-- she was a weaver.

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The women at the church that
sponsored my family here,

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they raised enough
money so that she

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could have a custom-made loom.

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And I would see her all the
time weaving at her loom.

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And that was how I think
she adjusted to this country

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and how she processed
her grief and her trauma.

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So I'm going to begin
a poem to honor her.

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It is called "The Weaver."

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She threaded the loom with
one strand of her long silver

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hair, which might have kept
growing until she was done,

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which might have fallen out.

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But I would come in and sit
beside her on the cushion

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without her noticing
and she would continue.

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Every day I saw this old woman
weaving at her loom, rivers

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and lakes underneath her hair,
the bottom full of silt. I

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could see it if I
reached with a comb.

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And that was when
she'd look at me.

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Under her hair she kept
her oldest son who was out

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for a morning swim with
swallows swooping down

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to touch the water.

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It made her happy as she
worked on silk dresses

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and her hair never ran out.

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Sometimes when she
was tired, she'd

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tie it up and let all the tired
animals around her house drink

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from her head."