Sensing the Enemy: An American woman among the boat people of Vietnam
From Lady Borton’s comments about writing Sensing the Enemy:
In late 1979, I essentially drove myself crazy when the novel I was trying to write based on my experiences in Viet Nam during the war collapsed. I was left with the opening quotation (which of course was not my own writing) and the title (three words of my own): "Sensing the Enemy." I was clear I would never write again. I returned to Southeast Asia to work as health administrator on Pulau Bidong, the largest refugee camp in Malaysia for Vietnamese Boat People.
Working on Bidong was like living in Viet Nam once again, although without the war. Life on Bidong was intense -- new arrivals dying from dehydration, food and water shortages, sewerage, trash, rats, and the noise from 13,000 people living on a space the size of the valley farm where I had previously lived alone.
Since I knew I would have no administrative resources, I’d brought along a portable typewriter, paper, carbon paper, and my high school dictionary. Of course, these are also a writer’s tools. Within a few weeks, I realized I was writing out in letters the book that had haunted me for years. The continual crises on Bidong left me little personal time. They also disarmed my strong editorial side. I had time only to record one experience before the next crisis consumed me. Carbon copies of those letters, which became Sensing the Enemy, sit in a safe-deposit box in Ohio.
Sensing the Enemy: An American woman among the boat people of Vietnam -- the only book in any language written from inside the Boat People exodus as it was happening -- describes life (and death) on Bidong as the stories unfolded. Although it was never my intention, Sensing the Enemy is as close to a primary document as anything we have about the Boat People exodus.
Review of Sensing the Enemy:
“In artless words that stem from compassion, Miss Borton illuminates the refugee experience, not the reasons that turned physicians and fishermen, teachers and traders into exiles. She dwells on the pains of that experience, because the people on Pulau Bidong had not yet reached the countries of asylum, where, one hopes, rewards awaited them for their pains. She illustrates the simple nobility of goals and the exceptional resources of spirit and determination that the refugees bring with them as their principal capital. These are gifts that they offer to those who let them come and stay. She does not make clear who the ''enemy'' of her title is. Could it be he who drives out bearers of such gifts and he who refuses to receive them?"