Refugee Boats

In "Black Eyed Woman" and "I'd Love You to Want Me," characters remember the actual experience of being on small boats over-stuffed with people as they crossed the South China Sea to try to escape from Vietnam. In both stories, the experience of being on the boat is a harrowing one, defined by a lack of privacy and the fear of the empty water around them. The narrator of "Black Eyed Woman" tells the reader, "I had not forgotten our nameless blue boat and it had not forgotten me, the red eyes pained on either side of its prow having never ceased to stare me down" (14). In "I'd Love You to Want Me," Mrs. Khahn remembers her own experience on a refugee boat: "by the fifth evening, the only sounds besides the waves slapping at the hull were children whimpering and adults praying to God, Byddha, and...