Inside Out And Back Again By Thanhha Lai

The book Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, is about a girl named Ha and her family leaving Vietnam after the war. She faced many challenges with moving countries. Leaving behind Vietnam was hard for her. Learning a new language was hard for her. Becoming herself again was hard for her. She turned inside out and back again.

In Vietnam, Ha was smart, defiant, brave, and stubborn. She had a similar story to other refugees because she goes through the same experiences as everyone else. “Bodies cram every centimeter below deck, then every centimeter on deck.” (Lai, pg 63) Ha and her family are not alone on their journey out of Vietnam. Other families from the same place are also leaving. She is going through the same things that other families

“..I wish I knew enough English to tell her to listen for the diacritical mark.” (Lai, 140) Ha is inside out because she is in a new country with a new language and she doesn’t know how to speak it. “No, they’re not curious.” (Lai, 146) Ha is inside out because people are bullying her and she doesn’t have anyone to help her. She is bullied because she looks different. “I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama.” ( Lai, 195) Ha is inside out because she misses Vietnam. She wants to be there where it is familiar and sometimes easier. She wants to have her papaya tree back. She wants to have her father back. She thinks that because she is being bullied and ridiculed that wartime in Saigon is better than peacetime in Alabama. Ha’s story is similar to other refugees’ stories because they all have trouble in new countries. “Sometimes I wish I’d stay there, watching the war, rather than being here, safe, but without friends.” (Arthur Brice, Children of War) Ha is not alone in the fact that she wanted to stay home in wartime with things she loved than be here in peacetime with things she did not love. “Many of us do not speak English, and lack of education made it even more difficult for us to learn the language, here” (Til Gurung Speech) Most of Ha’s family also didn’t know the language in the U.S. and they struggled at first. Ha is inside out for many reasons.

“I run and shout, Bully! Coward! Pink Snot Face!” (Lai, 219) Ha is coming back again because she is not as scared of Pink Boy as she was before. She is learning how to fight back with words. She is stronger than she was before. She is working with her brother to defeat Pink Boy as she is not scared anymore. “So someone is always saving lunch seats for me, Pem, and SSsi-Ti-Van; someone is always inviting us to a party…” (Lai, 229) Ha is coming back because she is making more friends and people are being nice to her. Brother Vu helped Ha come back to her old self. “We laugh and say, Perfect!” (Lai, 230) Ha is coming back because she is becoming happier. That is the first time she has laughed in a while, so she is returning to her happy self that she was in Vietnam. She is like other refugees because they always finally start to adapt to their new lives. “Now she has more confidence and more language skills to help herself and our family.” (Til Gurung Speech) Ha is like the woman he is talking about. At first she hardly knew anything. She didn’t know what anything was. But now she is coming back again by learning her