A Lucky Refugee

-

Thi Bui and her family got very lucky with their refugee story. Obviously the things that they went through were absolutely terrible, but compared to many who walked similar paths, Thi Bui and her family really lucked out. Once the communist forces took over her family was able to get seats on a boat out of the country. On that boat, they did not get caught, Ba was able to captain the boat and survive falling out of the boat. Then once they reached Malaysia Ma was able to get better and give birth to a healthy baby with little to no complications. Following this they only had a quick stay in the refugee camp before they moved to the U.S. where Ba lucked out by meeting a charity worker who brought him to the house after he got separated. The kids then survived pneumonia before moving to California and becoming successful. This is not the story of so many who lived similar lives. There were just under 20 million people in south Vietnam and of those just under 3 million fled the country meaning about 17 million were left to live under the oppressive new government. Of those who tried to escaped by boat, about a third died before they even got to places like Malaysia or Thailand. Even of those surviving people many spent years in refugee camps before they were able to restart their lives. Very few ended up having the success that Thi Bui would have. Many also lost family members in this process which reminds us that it is a miracle that none of Thi Bui’s family immediate family died from escaping Vietnam. Even by today’s standards Thi Bui is lucky when comparing to a place like Sudan. With the war that is going on in Sudan about 11.7 million people have had to leave their homes and many have become refugees in neighboring countries. However, unlike with Vietnam there are not many of these refugees that are leaving to places like America and Europe. While these numbers may be off due to poor documentation, about 10,000 and 50,000 have relocated to the EU and U.S. respectively. This highlights the sad reality that many refugees must face of not being able to start over in a new place. The current stories in the world help us understand just how lucky Thi Bui got as a refugee.


 

Comments

  1. Anthony SalemDecember 14, 2025 at 7:56 PM

    This blog does a strong job of putting Thi Bui’s story into a larger historical and global context, which really highlights how rare her family’s outcome was. I also like how you connect Vietnam to modern refugee crises, because it shows that these issues are still happening today.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Modern World

-
  This weekend marks my parents twenty-eighth wedding anniversary. This got me thinking the ways that wedding have changed over the years. With the advent of social media wedding have become more of a comedy. For example, at my parents wedding all the photos were low quality and all of them now exist in a large photo book that gets pulled out once a year. Nowadays many couples seem to try and use their wedding for attention on social media. So many times I see some random wedding video come up and its like I don’t really care. This has historically been a pretty special day but it has been degraded as so many people only want the clout. This has become so normal that according to Sherry Gaba who is a writer and a licensed relationship therapist, 68 percent of younger couples will post about their engagement within one day of the engagement. Similar numbers were also seen to post about their wedding day. With divorce rates rising steadily, the question must be asked why are people n...
Read more

Response to “There is No Unmarked Women”

-
I disagree with the notion Deborah Tannen put forth in the short essay “There is No Unmarked Woman” that women tend to be more marked than men. The only difference is the way that men and women tend to be marked. As Tannen described, women tend to be more focused on the physical aspects of being marked. Tannen describes herself closely inspecting other women at a conference that she went to. This demonstrates that women tend to value the physical more than men, but that does not mean that men are marked any less. For example, take collage and professional sports. Men overwhelmingly mark themselves as a fan of certain sports franchises. However, this is slightly harder to spot than the clothes and makeup that women tend to wear which leads to the perception that women are more marked than men. There are also many other ways that men are marked that can be slightly harder to see. For example, the amount of money that a man makes automatically marks him and determines many of his future o...
Read more

A Rough Life

-
The United States has always been a place that “welcomes” immigrants however, that does not means that immigrants have always had an easy time adjusting to their new lives in America. In the book “The Best We Could Do”, Thi Bui describes her rough life in America particularly because her parents struggle to fit in with American culture or rather American culture does not easily allow immigrants from a war torn country to become successful. This can be seen on page sixty seven when a young boy spits on Thi’s father and calls him a “gook”. Thi Bui’s situation is not helped by the fact that her father is a grieving man dealing with trauma that few can imagine. But, even with all of this against her Thi is still able to live a pretty successful Life and become a national bestselling author. Her story is undoubtedly inspirational, yet countless immigrants in a similar situation never gain half of her fame or fortune. What about the young immigrant who has left their home in South America an...
Read more