Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai— book trailer. 

Thanhha Lai reads from Inside Out and Back Again at the 2011 National Book Awards.

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai (Harper Collins, 2011).

Inside Out and Back Again is about a young girl, Ha, who leaves Vietnam during the war and finds a home in Alabama with her mother and three brothers. Ha’s father has been missing since leaving home on a navy mission when she was one. Ha’s ten now. 

The story unfolds in verse and Thanhha Lai says so much with so little. I could not put the book down because I got hooked on the pared down writing that floats through you like smoke. 

Should We?

Mother calls a family meeting.

…Mother asks us,
Should we leave our home?

Brother Quang says,
How can we scramble away
like rats,
without honor, without dignity,
when everyone must help
rebuild the country?

Brother Khoi says,
What if Father comes home
and finds his family gone?

Brother Vu says,
Yes, we must go.

… Mother twists her brows.
I’ve lived in the North.
At first, not much will happen,
then suddenly Quang
will be asked to leave college.
Ha will come home
chanting the slogans
of Ho Chi Minh,
and Khoi will be rewarded
for reporting to his teacher
everything we say in the house.

Her brows twist
so much
we hush.

This is a story of many Vietnamese families at the end of the Vietnam War, leaving everything that was familiar and starting new with next to nothing. Ha and her family struggle through some hard times— leaving Vietnam by boat, staying in refugee camps in Guam then in Florida, waiting for an American sponsor, learning English, fighting off bullies. But there is always a sense that because they have each other they’ll make it through. 

(Image Source & extra review)