Inside Out And Back Again By Thanha Lai

Ela Essay

A family is forced to evolve due to a life-changing event, The Vietnam War, in the novel, Inside Out

and Back Again by Thanha Lai. One of these characters is Há, a ten year old girl who is forced to leave

everything behind and move to America. Há evolves throughout the novel by learning English. When

Há first moves to America, Há doesn’t understand the language and is confused and frustrated. By

the end of the novel, Há isn’t fluent in the language, but she has greatly improved. Ha also evolves

through her moving America. When Há still lives in Vietnam, she is acting like a normal ten year old

would, but by the end the move to America makes Há more mature. Há evolves to

Throughout the novel, Há learns the language gradually but she still has and thinks the

person who invented English should be bitten by a snake and that the language is illogical. In part 3 Há

meets Mrs.Washington, who is an elderly women who’s son fought and died in the Vietnam War, who

helps tutor her and gives her tips to learn English. By the end of the book, Há is getting better at English

and can now communicate with people but has to process it in her head. She now knows, noun,

adjectives, verbs and many of the rules of english. Há evolves because she needed to know the language

to communicate with people in America. Há learns to evolve because of the difficulties she faced with the

language. Há is forced to move to America in an attempt to escape the Vietnam War. While in America Há learns to evolve because of the move to America. At the beginning of the novel, in the poem “Birthday

Wishes,” (page 30-31) Há shares 10 wishes that she wants for her birthday and all the wishes, except for

the wish for father to return, are typical wishes for a ten year old to make like wishing for a sister and

wishing for her hair to grow long. Later in the novel, when Há is in America, she makes another set