The title of this piece is from Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus" (1883), of "give me your tired, your poor" fame. Speaking as the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, the image of tempest-tossed emigrants in search of a home resonates deeply with me. I wanted to create an art piece that acknowledges the trauma of the Vietnamese diaspora’s recent history, but also confronts the paradoxically xenophobic viewpoints held by many in the Vietnamese (and, more generally, Asian) diaspora communities, where older generations can be breathtakingly intolerant of newer immigrants (especially Latinx and Middle Eastern people) whom they see as less legitimate and more suspicious.

So, to create my boat and its passengers, I looked at photos of not only Vietnamese "boat people", but also Cuban and Syrian refugees, many of whom have similarly risked their lives on barely-seaworthy vessels on the off chance of a better life on a different shore. By putting members of these groups in literally the same boat as the Vietnamese refugees of decades past, I invite my viewers to consider the similarities between different waves of refugees, and to question whether any are truly less deserving of our compassion and aid.

To further emphasize the opportunities for empathy, I selected poetic excerpts in two languages, Arabic and Vietnamese, that (like the line from the Lazarus poem) reflect the tribulations of forced migration, particularly the role of the ocean as both an avenue to a better life and a barrier between the migrant and their homeland.

The Arabic (wrapping around the left side of the frame) is from Mahmoud Darwish's أحد عشر كوكباً على آخر المشهد الأندلسي [Eleven Stars over al-Andalus] (1992), an eleven-part ode (قصيدة qaseeda) mourning the end of Islamic Spain (Andalusia). The line I used is from the tenth section:

أَتْرُكُ قَلْبي الصَّغير في خِزانَةِ أُمِّيَ, أَتْرُكُ حُلْمِيَ في الْماءِ يَضْحَك

My loose translation is: "I leave my young heart in my mother's cabinet, I leave my dreams in the laughing waves."

While this poem is written in the voice of an Arab exile expelled from Andalusia after the end of the Reconquista in 1492, many scholars see in it Darwish's feelings about his own exile from his native Palestine.

The Vietnamese (wrapping around the right) is from the song "Bên Em Đang Có Ta" [With You There Are We] (1991), music by Trúc Hồ and lyrics by Trầm Tử Thiêng. This song was written and recorded in 1991 as part of a charity effort to improve conditions in Vietnamese refugee camps across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. The lyrics I chose are from the second verse:

Cha yêu em thiết tha, mang gởi con cho tình người
Mặc đại dương mênh mông khoác lên thân nhỏ nhoi

Again, here is my loose translation: "[Your] father loves you desperately, entrusting his child to human compassion / [Watching] the vast mantle of the ocean engulf [your] small frame."