Anh Do's Book 'The Happiest Refugee'

Anh Do Had A Strange Life

Anh Do’s book ‘The Happiest Refugee’ is made up of a prologue and twelve chapters that tell a tale of Anh and his family until 2010 which is when the book was published. Anh has come a long way from the day his mother tried like crazy to stop two year old him crying as the family secretly escapes Vietnam.

While Anh is on the boat to Australia many pirates make two berserk attacks, which are amazing both in the courage the refugees show and in the cold-blooded cruelty of the pirates, ‘Suddenly guns were lifted and machetes raised. The robbery now turned into a full-blown standoff: nine men with weapons against thirty-seven starving refugees, a baby dangling over the ocean, and a naked woman awaiting hell.’ (p.g 23). He focuses greatly on telling the reader that as the pirates are leaving them for dead, one of the younger pirates throws a liter of water to the terrified people ‘That water saved our lives…that second pirate attack saved our lives’(p.g 24).

When in Sydney Anh’s parents secure a sewing business that involves working long hours in challenging circumstances for limited pay. The reader laughs with Anh as he relives his boyish adventures and feel the genuine love and admiration he possesses for his loving mother when he is able to buy her first house in