The message the author is trying to convey is that the situations that all of these Vietnamese people went through were terrifying. For example, in the poem “One Engine”, “...Communists catch us fleeing, it’s a million times worse than staying at home” (87). The author uses the word fleeing instead of other words like escaping, and leaving because fleeing has a negative connotation, this makes the reader understand that Ha and her family did not leave by choice, but were forced out of there beloved country by enemies that would kill them, which makes the situation terrifying because they could die. Furthermore, in the poem “One Engine”, “Thailand is much farther on one engine. It was risky…” (87). In this quote, much farther creates a sense
