The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse: A Memory of Vietnam

"Inspired by Li-Young Lee’s poem “Visions and Interpretations,” in which “the migrant rain” represents a recurring burden, this lyrical memoir conjures an alternative fate for the author’s absent father, presumably drowned at sea while trying to escape Vietnam by boat. In Vinh Nguyen’s speculative universe, the father, while surviving the border crossing, still does not lead a happy life but succumbs to ill health after years of stress and hard labor. Via this poignant experiment, Nguyen astutely shows how a refugee’s migration narrative can be at once forward-oriented and tragically regressive; the idea of refuge cannot be defined by legal or political considerations but, as he explains, “something to be lived, something that is not yet over or that is still to come.”"