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Refugees In Inside Out And Back Again

664 Words3 Pages

All around the world, there are countless refugees. Refugees are people who have to flee their country for reasons such as ongoing conflict, violence, and war. Inside Out & Back Again, is a novel about a girl named Ha and her perspective while living through the Vietnam War as a refugee. In the title Inside Out & Back Again, 'inside out’ and ‘back again’ relate to the experiences shared by all refugees. When a person becomes a refugee they feel ‘inside out’ because their whole life has been flipped around, and at a point, they don’t know where they belong. They come ‘back again’ to that feeling of having tragedy in their life. Refugees can connect to Ha’s experience which deals with new challenges, facing yourself, overcoming emotions, and …show more content…

This is what Ha and her family had to go through, which is relatively similar to other refugees. The article, Escape from Vietnam: A Refugee’s Story of the American Dream states, “All of us on that boat, and hundreds of thousands of others, fled for the same reason: to escape the oppression of the communist regime.” They had to flee Vietnam due to the communist taking over, Ha and her family also had to do the same thing. In the novel, Inside Out & Back Again the poem Inside Out on page 20 states, “The war is coming closer to home.” also the poem, Current News on page 40 states, “But when we keep talking about how close the Communists have gotten to Saigon…” Both of these quotes tell us that the war is coming closer to Ha’s home and that the Communists are taking over, leading them to evacuate Vietnam. The poem One Mat Each in the novel, on page 102 states, “Bodies cram every centimeter below deck, then every centimeter on deck. Everyone knows the ship could sink, unable to hold the piles of bodies that keep crawling on like raging ants from a disrupted nest.” Which is very similar to the other refugee experience. Their lives have been turned ‘inside out’ because it doesn’t happen to them on a normal day, everything is happening so fast. War is something that changes a person's life, it changes theirs

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Ha’s Situation and the Vietnam War Ha’s situation relates a lot to the information from the Vietnam War articles. First of all, Ha lived in South Vietnam. This is significant because in the story Ha knew of many refugees, and in the article it said that 1 in every 12 South Vietnam citizens were refugees. There was also a lot of bombing in the war.

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Inside Out And Back Again Ha Quotes

1263 Words | 6 Pages

In the novel Inside Out and Back again Ha and her family have to flee their home South Vietnam because of the Communist invasion, but escaping isn’t the only hard part, Ha gets bullied, doesn’t speak the language of her new country, and has no clue about the culture of this new place. Ha has a very similar experience to many other refugees throughout the world. Ha, her mother, and brothers have all gone through many things flipping their world upside down, and just like many other refugees there whole life has changed because of what happened to them. But despite all of this they have managed to come back. Just like Ha’s family Til Gurung and his people have had to go through the same universal refugee experience.

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There are millions and millions of refugees around the world, but all of their stories might be different. The essay and poem “Letter to a Young Refugee from Another” by Andrew Lam and “Song of P’eng-ya” by Tu Fu tell a story about the author’s experiences as a refugee; the two of them were in slightly different situations. The authors talk about their experiences in their writing, and both have their message to tell the readers. Adam Lam’s essay “Letter to a Young Refugee from Another” is about the author’s experience in a refugee camp at a young age. He also gives us advice on how to survive as a refugee.

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Inside Out And Back Again By Thanhha Lai

930 Words | 4 Pages

In the novel, Inside Out and Back Again, Thanhha Lai tells a story of a 10-year-old girl, Ha, and her family’s experience of living in Vietnam and having to flee to Alabama due to war. Background Info: When fleeing a country, many refugees experience the universal refuge of becoming refugees because they are forced to leave their destroyed homes and travel to a new, different country. This could turn a person’s life “Inside Out” which means that their lives is impacting negatively. Preview 3 points: 1. Many refugees around the world  experience losing family members as they flee their homes, which Ha also experienced through losing her father.(explain wym by loss of family member) 2.

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Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: A Literary Analysis

1292 Words | 6 Pages

Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

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How Does Ha Come Back Again

1128 Words | 5 Pages

They get “turned inside out “and eventually “come back again”. A refugee is a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape the disaster they are in. Ha has a hopeful personality in Vietnam and once the war begins and she has to leave, she gets turned inside out. Ha comes back again once they get to Alabama.

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1109 Words | 5 Pages

She faces racism, discrimination, loneliness, and, over time, a growing sense of love for her new home. Ha’s life is turned “inside out and back again”. Before Ha had to flee Saigon, she was headstrong and selfish, but she was also a girl who loved her mother and couldn't wait to grow up. She wanted to be able to do something before her older brothers did it, and do it better. But most of all, Ha wanted to fit in, to be liked.

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Inside Out And Back Again By Thanhha Lai

872 Words | 4 Pages

A feeling of sorrow is created by this loss, and it causes them to feel like their lives are being turned inside out. For example, in the article “Children of War,” a teenage refugee from Bosnia named Emil said, “Sometimes I wish I stayed there…”(Brice). Just like Emil, when many refugee children leave so many things behind, they often wish that they could have stayed in their old country despite all of the dangers. Very similarly, Ha said, “...at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama”(Lai 195). This clearly shows how much Ha was struggling with adjusting to her life in Alabama.

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813 Words | 4 Pages

Regret is a powerful emotion that has the ability to scar someone for the rest of their life. Moments of regret can come from relationships, self-made decisions and life changing events. The idea of regret also applies to “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien. Although these two literary pieces are very different in many ways, both authors describe the experience of the Vietnam War as a time of regretful decisions that negatively impacted people of both the American side and the Vietnamese side. Both authors tell a story about a character that recalls of flashbacks of the war, where they grieve over the past decisions that have affected them for the rest of their life.

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Inside Out And Back Again By Thanhha Lai

1141 Words | 5 Pages

This connects back to Ha’s situation. Both Ha and the people of South Vietnam had to think of a way to escape Vietnam. Ha could just bypass the navy, but the others have to marry a foreigner to leave. These are examples of refugees escaping their

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Inside Out And Back Again By Thanhha Lai

945 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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1223 Words | 5 Pages

Many of them departed in order to fight for their home country, just to feel a sense of loneliness and ignorance from everyone else when they arrived back. Soldiers sacrificed their lives for their country, just to come back to a place they call home to disregard and ignore them. In John Kerry’s excerpt, we read about his criticisms of the war as he sheds light on the betrayal and loneliness soldiers felt after sacrificing their lives. He stated, “And a young man comes out of high school and says, ‘That is fine. I am going to serve my country’ and he goes to Vietnam and he shoots and he kills and he does his job or maybe he doesn’t kill, maybe he just goes and he comes back, and

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1083 Words | 5 Pages

The lives of refugees are turned “inside out” out when they are forced to flee because they have to leave the only home they have ever known and try to figure out a way to leave their old lives behind. They are not leaving their country because they want to but because they are forced to and it can feel like

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895 Words | 4 Pages

Refugees are people who flee their country due to problems with the government or war. Refugees' lives turn inside out when they move to a different country or state and have to deal with racism, language barriers and fleeing. In the novel Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai, Ha and her family live in Saigon where there is war. Ha was a curious and adventurous girl that loved her family. Ha and her family's life turned "Inside Out" when they had to flee Saigon and move to America to start a completely different life, living with their sponsor and having to find jobs and go to school.

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1115 Words | 5 Pages

The refugees in this case were the Jews. In the title “Refugee Blues”, “blues” is mentioned. Blues was a sad slow music which consisted of three line stanza and a lot of repetition for example “old passports can 't do that my dear old passports can 't do that.” The effect and purpose of these repetitions is for the poet to force the reader to linger on any points he feels are important, hence making a longer lasting impact on the reader.

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