Stormy weather.(Editorial)

At the end of last year, I started having a lot of dreams about water. In one dream, I watched from inside our house as black floodwaters rose up to the second-floor windows. In another, my sisters and I stood on the shore while giant waves rushed toward us. When I got home for the holidays, I asked my parents to tell me again the story of our family's escape from Vietnam more than 25 years ago.

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My father had moved us out of Saigon and into hiding in the Mekong countryside soon after he was released from re-education camp. My parents, their three small daughters and my aunt would all join two other families on a small fishing boat. It was 1978, and the exodus of boat people had just begun. Eventually this exodus amounted to more than a million people, about half of whom died at sea. My parents hadn't yet heard the reports of pirates, storms and sinking ships that beset refugees. My father stood at the prow helping to steer us out toward open water. "I held my baby close as waves washed over us. Her lips had turned blue from the cold," my mother said. We spent two days at sea before being picked up by Thai fishermen and taken to a refugee camp in Thailand.

In my family, vuot bien, or border crossing, is not often talked about, long overshadowed by the struggle to make it in the U.S. But for us, like many other Vietnamese Americans, Katrina forced those memories forward. The hurricane reminded us of how closely the politics of inequality are entwined with disaster and displacement.

ColorLines' first issue of 2006 examines one of the most important national events in recent memory. ...