THE VOICE OF REFUGEES
published Gobblers & Masticadores Espana
THE VOICE OF REFUGEES
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What are you thinking
The way I talk is funny
It is your vernacular
You think only you know how to laugh
Gosh as bright as the Sun
Lighting up unexpectedly my ancestor’s graves
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Within each drop of blood (I shed each month)
The tears of my parents
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Cut and dig
Dig then cut
Cut dig
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You understand?
My ancestors are forever in your debt.
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GIỌNG NÓI CỦA NGƯỜI TỊ NẠN
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Bạn đang nghĩ gì
Cách tôi nói chuyện ngộ ngộ
Ngôn ngữ của bạn mà
Bạn nghĩ chỉ có bạn biết cười
Ôi tươi như mặt trời
Sáng cả mả tổ tiên tôi
`
Trong mỗi giọt máu (tôi xả mỗi tháng)
Là nước mắt của cha mẹ tôi
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Mổ và xẻ
Xẻ rồi mổ
Mổ xẻ
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Bạn hiểu?
Tổ tiên tôi mang ơn bạn.
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DECEMBER 2020
Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm, the blogger, poet, and translator, was born in 1971 in Phu Nhuan, Saigon, Vietnam. The pharmacist currently lives and works in Western Sydney, Australia.
Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm 
There remains an unjustly erroneous perception of refugees and migrants as basically willfully/contently becoming permanent financial/resource burdens on their host nations.
Many are rightfully desperate human beings, perhaps enough so to work very hard for basic food and shelter. They should be treated humanely, including timely access to Covid-19 vaccination.
Often overlooked is that many (im)migrants are fleeing global-warming-related chronic crop failures in the southern hemisphere widely believed to be related to the northern hemisphere’s chronic fossil-fuel burning, beginning with the Industrial Revolution. And what ever happened to our self-professed Christian charity and compassion, anyway?
Also, I’ve noticed over the decades that the strong work ethic practiced by these workers is exceptional, particularly in the produce harvesting sector. It is hump-busting hard work others won’t tolerate for themselves [myself included]. I can truly imagine such laborers being fifty to a hundred percent more productive than their born-and-reared-here counterparts.
No, I’m not saying a strong work ethic is a trait racially genetically inherited by one generation from a preceding generation, etcetera. Rather, it’s an admirable culturally determined factor, though also in large part motivated by the said culture’s internal and surrounding economic and political conditions.
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