I was not a boat person unless the English Pilgrims who fled religious persecution to come to America on the Mayflower were also boat people. Those refugees just happened to be fortunate that the soon-to-be-hapless natives did not have a camera to record them as the foul-smelling, half-starved, unshaven, and lice-ridden lot that they were. In contrast, our misery was forever recorded in L’Humanité, where we were seen as anything but human. No, the boat people were not human, they did not get the benefit of some romantic painter casting them in oils, standing boldly on the prow of their sinking
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