five: inside out and back again

Lai, Thanhha. Inside Out and Back Again. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2011. Kindle file.

Annotations

"Oh, my daughter, at ties you have to fight, but preferably not with your fist."

Kim Ha is a ten year old girl who must flee her home country during the Vietnam war. Ha must now deal with bullies, cultural differences, and learning the English language after being sponsored to Alabama. 

Justification for nomination

The beginning of Inside Out and Back Again starts out with Tet, the first day of the lunar calendar. Kim Ha's mother visits the I Ching Teller of Fate and has predicted their lives to be twisted inside out. After speaking to their Uncle So'n, their father's best friend, they must decide if they should stay and be refugees of the North Vietnamese or to abandon their country onto a navy ship. Upon safely aboard the navy ship, they soon learn that Saigon is gone, there no longer is a South Vietnam and is now ruled by Communist, North Vietnam. 

They land in Guam and now wait for a sponsor. They soon learn that they will only get a sponsor if they choose to convert into Christianity. Months into being in Guam and waiting for a sponsor, it wasn't until early August that they were sponsored by what Ha describes as a cowboy. 

A month after being sponsored, Ha and her two brothers must start school. Her mother starts work at a sewing machine factory and her eldest brother will become auto mechanic. With the start of school, Ha has difficulty expressing and explaining herself with her limited English. She then gets bullied by a pink boy and soon makes friends. She finds comfort from her neighbor, Miss Washington, who helps her overcome her cultural difference, improve her English, and given a way to best fight off the pink boy who continues to bully her. 

Ha's mother sends a letter to her father's brother to see if she was going to find word of her father, whether he was still alive and well or if he was dead. Here, the family soon come together and deals with the fact that their father is gone and there is no chance of him ever returning. The book ends off with Tet, the first day of the lunar calender.

Inside Out and Back Again was a fascinating multicultural book that talks about the culture shock, the difference in language barriers, and what the American dream was about. Though it didn't touch much on the American dream, it made me realize that that's what it's about when Ha's mother talks about college and having dreams of what her children were going to be or hope they would become. 

I enjoy how Lai broke up the books into parts. It felt like a different genre. The book was in a diary sort of format as it spoke of particular days and time of days. Telling stories of what happened on the days. Each entry had its own title, giving us an idea of what the entry was about. Though I don’t really like entry or letter type of format when it comes to reading, this one was rather short and a good read. Each entry varied.

I enjoy these kinds of book that is able to send me back into the days of the Vietnam War. Though I don't know much about how my parents have ran from Vinai in order to get to Thailand to find peace. As well as having the American dream to give their children a better life and education.

Inside Out and Back Again as the author explains in her Letter to the Reader explains of the emotions and senses that Ha goes through as compare to just remember and living it. Lai wanted the readers to have a different perspective, in order to feel and emotionally understand the frustration she had gone through. It related closely to Lai's real life story, only told differently.

Genre: Multicultural | Authentic | War | Historical Fiction | Children | Realistic Fiction