Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai

Despite my best efforts to get my reading back on track, December has been slipping away from me at an alarming rate. With only eleven days left in the month, I decided to read some shorter award-winners than I had originally planned. Inside Out & Back Again, the story of a young girl who flees Saigon with her family just prior to the end of the Vietnam War, is a novel that just recently popped up on my radar. I came across this title while searching for a novel to read with my eighth grade language arts students. 

A little bit of research revealed that this refugee story by Thanhha Lai was a New York Times Bestseller, and was the recipient of a Newberry Medal and a National Book Award. Although I ultimately passed this one over for my class novel, I was curious enough to purchase a copy for myself so I could check it out. I was not disappointed.

Inside Out focuses on Ha, a ten year old Vietnamese girl who lives in Saigon with her mother and brothers in 1975. The novel is divided into four main sections, which detail Ha's life in Saigon, her escape to America, her new life in Alabama, and her "new normal" once she begins to adjust to living in a new country. Ha tells her own story in the form of free verse journal entries, which effectively communicate her feelings through their vivid imagery. 

Lai's use of free verse means that Inside Out is a very quick read, but the novel is still deeply moving and engaging. While it won't take most readers very long to finish, its message will stick in your head long after you turn the final page. Ha's beautiful poetry brings the reader on an emotional journey that encompasses all of the difficulties refugees face, including the pain of watching your homeland be destroyed, living in poverty, struggling to learn a different language, dealing with prejudice, and trying to find a way to live in a place that feels utterly alien to you. I often found myself pausing during my reading to read certain passages again, just to spend some time with the language.

My favorite passage was one titled "War and Peace," which is about when Ha's teacher attempts to explain Vietnam to her fourth grade class:

MiSSS SScott

shows the class

photographs

of a burned, naked girl

running, crying

down a dirt road

of people climbing, screaming,

desperate to get on

the last helicopter

out of Saigon

of skeletal refugees,

crammed aboard a

sinking fishing boat,

reaching up to the heavens

for help

of mound of combat boots

abandoned by soldiers

of the losing side.

She's telling the class 

where I'm from.

She should have shown

something about

papayas and Tet.

No one would believe me

but at times

I would choose

wartime in Saigon

over

peacetime in Alabama.

Inside Out & Back Again is a remarkably beautiful novel, and one that is well deserving of all the honors that have been heaped upon it. Anyone who isn't wild about novels written in verse (like myself, usually) shouldn't be nervous about picking this one up. The choppy, poetic style is perfect for expressing the feelings of a young girl just learning English and going through an emotional time in her life. It doesn't feel forced, nor is it difficult to understand.

And what's more, perhaps the best thing about this novel is that it provides a pathway to understanding the refugee experience that could help open people's minds and hearts to the plight of those who have to flee their countries today. Empathy seems to be an emotion that is in particularly short supply in America lately. I have always been a believer in the power of literature to create social change, and books like this could help do it.

While I ended up selecting a nonfiction title for my classroom this year, Inside Out & Back Again will be the novel that I ask for next year. For both literary merit, and the honest depiction of the struggle refugees face, this book is wonderful and necessary.