Inside Out And Back Again Sparknotes

What makes a good story worth reading? Noticeably, it is engaging, descriptive, and personable, just like a real person. And a story is worth reading for the same reasons that a person is worth listening to. Each story, just like each person, has its own distinct personality, which sets it apart from others, whether good or bad. Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhhà Lai is an example of just how much personality can fit inside one story. This verse novel is an award-winning story that revolves around a young girl moving from South Vietnam to America during the Vietnam War and the struggles that she and her family endure during these times. Being such a moving story, it is expected that more meaning is to be drawn from the story than just the

Thanhhà Lai is offering a solution to people living life unfulfilled. This solution is to live life intentionally, to make conscious choices with a clear sense of purpose and direction. These conscious decisions allow for a life of responsibility, a responsibility for living, and actively doing so. Living intentionally demands an extent of self-awareness, which is expressed in Inside Out and Back Again through the perspective of Hà. Being a young girl at the age of 10 when her whole life is flipped upside down, she experienced so much change and struggle during these formative years, and the reader has the opportunity to understand what it is like to go through such a time of trial. It is important to understand that this story is not centered around an adult or a kid genius but a regular ten-year-old girl who must do her best to manage what little she can control in her life. This is shown when she describes her father, and how she never knew him, but she would know glimpses from things that her mother or brothers would say, such that he would phrase “tout de suite” as “tuyet sut” which meant right away, “Sometimes I whisper tuyet sut to myself to pretend I know him” (Lai 48). She is trying to take control of this aspect of her life, an effort that even she knows to be futile by acknowledging that she is only pretending. This pretending,

This change from the beginning of the story to the end again shows how Lai argues that there is an issue with the way that people are living, and there is something to be done about it. The change that Hà endures is juxtaposed elegantly through Lai’s naming of the chapters. For example, there is a chapter named “Feel Smart” in part one of the book, and then in part three, there is a chapter named "Feel Dumb”. These chapters show the change in someone who would commit themselves to becoming the person that they want to be. Before living intentionally, living with a purpose, someone might “feel smart”, as if they do not know what they do not know, therefore leading to a sense that much has been achieved and that there is very little left. After learning about a driving force, becoming self-aware in a new way, then a person will “feel dumb”, as there is now knowledge that there is so much to be done, so much growth to be had. Of course, the chapters deal with Hà and the struggles that she goes through when moving to a new place with a new language. She struggles to express that she already knows much of what they are teaching, and she hates it, but she pushes on anyway, giving a prime example of living intentionally, even if it is not the most pleasant experience. Another example of this dichotomy between chapters is part one “Birthday