Bibliography
Lai, T. & Shappell, R. (2011). Inside out & back again. New York: Harper. ISBN: 9780061962783
Plot Summary
It is the first day of the lunar calendar. The year of the cat. 1975. Kim Há lives in Saigon with her mother and three older brothers. But as the Vietnam War ends and Saigon crumbles, Há’s mother makes the decision to leave Saigon. The family leaves the only home they have ever known. Há’s father is MIA from the war, but they will never find out if he returns. A new life in Alabama awaits the family. There, Há must learn to adjust to this new life, this new language, food and customs. How will things be when the year turns to the year of the cat, 1976?
Critical Analysis
This book in verse is split into three parts. The first part is in Saigon. It gives the reader a background to the life Há and her family live. Right off the bat, Há’s stubbornness seeps through when she touches her big toe to the floor. She refuses to believe that only males can bring good luck to the family. This sets off a chain of events that leads us to the second part of the book entitled At Sea. This section details the harrowing trip from Saigon to Guam, and then the family waits until someone from America agrees to sponsor them. The last section of the book, Alabama, describes the struggles Há and her family endure in this new life.
While this is a book in verse, it also appears to act as a diary. Instead of writing the date at the top of the page, the title is at the bottom of every poem. This could be a cultural custom that the reader may not know about. Dialogue is represented with italics, and there are many Vietnamese phrases scattered throughout the book. When Há is attempting to learn English, her frustration at the different rules are easily felt. The author, Thanhha Lai, writes several of the English terms the way Há pronounces them. One of the friends she makes, Steven, she refers to as SSsÌ-Ti-Vân.
Lai weaves her own experiences as a refugee from Vietnam into this tale. The stanzas are short, and most of the lines are no more than three to five words. There is no rhyming, but there is a sort of rhythm. While there is not as much text as a full novel, Thai is able to create emotion with her select word choice. The poem Current News, for example, creates a sad tone. “ But when we keep talking about/how close the Communists/have gotten to Saigon,/how much prices have gone up/since American soldiers left,/how many distant bombs/were heard the previous night,/Miss Xinh finally says no more./From now on/Fridays/will be for/happy news./ No one has anything/to say.”
Há tends to compare everyone in America’s skin tones and hair colors to fruits. Steven/SSsÌ-Ti-Vân is “of coconut-shell skin” (pg 184). Another girl has honey hair (pg 189), and there are “three girls of bronze-bread skin…” (pg 189). One way the author uses dragonflies in Há’s belly rather than butterflies. This helps point out the difference in cultures.
The audiobook, which can be found through your local library’s Overdrive program, is approximately three hours long. The narrator is Doan Ly. For this particular reader, listening at 1.5x speed was and acceptable speed. By listening to this, the dates at the end of the poems are a little confusing. It took me until they were in the tent city in Guam that I realized the dates were at the end of the poem, not the beginning. It was helpful to hear the Vietnamese terms and names spoken by the narrator. Any time there was dialogue spoken by Há and her broken English, it made it easier for me to imagine her as an English Language Learner student. It was hard to listen to Há and her struggles at adjusting. But it happens slowly, over time, as it probably did for the author.
This has been a book on my list to read since I student taught. A student was reading this book, and she managed to talk her literature group into reading it for their historical book club book. I had minimal knowledge of it. One of my current students is reading it, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to build a relationship with her. In all honesty, this wasn’t as amazing as I thought it would be, but it was an enjoyable listen/read.
Review Excerpt(s)
Newbery Medal Nominee (2012)
National Book Award for Young People's Literature (2011)
Jane Addams Children's Book Award
BOOKLIST: “Based in Lai’s personal experience, this first novel captures a child–refugee’s struggle with rare honesty. Written in accessible, short free–verse poems, Hà’s immediate narrative describes her mistakes—both humorous and heartbreaking; and readers will be moved by Hà’s sorrow as they recognize the anguish of being the outcast.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS: “An enlightening, poignant and unexpectedly funny novel in verse. In her not-to-be-missed debut, Lai evokes a distinct time and place and presents a complex, realistic heroine whom readers will recognize, even if they haven’t found themselves in a strange new country.”
Connections
Use the first part of the book as an introduction to the Vietnam war in a social studies class. The first portion is peaceful with hints of the strife Saigon is enduring. In the second portion, the tone shifts dramatically.
Compare refugees to immigrants. What’s the difference? Are Há and her family immigrants or refugees?
Find paired text with articles of the Syrian refugees, etc.
Historical fiction literature circles
This would be a good read aloud with an ELL class. Students may relate to Há’s trouble learning the English language, customs, and foods. This could then evolve into students speaking of their own culture and creating a project out of it that ends in a celebration of diversity.
*Another book in verse that takes place in 1975. Only this character was airlifted out of Vietnam and adopted by an American family:
Burg, A. (2009). All the broken pieces : a novel in verse. New York: Scholastic Press. ISBN: 9780545080927
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