Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai

I loved Listen, Slowly, Thanhha Lai's second novel, when I read it this year as one of the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction finalists.  In my review, I wrote that it was "a wonderful story of family, love and belonging..."  Yet, despite all the buzz that included the 2011 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and a Newbury honor, I had never read Thanhha Lai's debut novel, Inside Out and Back Again - until now.

The story begins in 1975 Saigon, Vietnam.  The American troops have already left the country after a long. losing war and the Communists are getting closer and closer to the city.  Despite the war, 10 year-old Kim Hà has always lived a relatively ordinary life with her mother and three brothers.  Except that her father, who had been in the Vietnamese Navy, had been captured by the Communists when she was just a year old, and the family has no idea if he is dead or alive.  But now, bombs are dropping not far from Saigon and getting closer, school is closed, food is scarce, and friends are disappearing.  It is clear that the government is about to collapse and their father's friend, Uncle Sơn, tells Hà's family that it is time for them to get out of Vietnam.

Just as Saigon falls to the Communists, the family secures places on a boat that will take them to the safety of Thailand, the first leg of their journey to a new life.  Once there, Hà's mother decides the family will travel on to the United States, believing there will be more opportunity for them than any of their other choices.

After a long wait in a Florida refugee camp, the family is finally sponsored by a man wearing cowboy boots and a big cowboy hat, and find themselves living in Alabama.  Here, the family is hidden away from the sponsor's wife, who is embarrassed by them.  Adjusting to life in America is hard for the Kim family, wearing charity clothing, eating strange food so different from what they are used to, and for Hà, it means having to learn English and no longer being the best student in her class.  To make matters worse, Hà's name is pronounced incorrectly, so that it sound like laughter to American ears and naturally, this inspires the class bully to seek Hà out to victimize.

But gradually, and with a lot of ingenuity, the family adjusts, the cowboy sponsor treats them kindly, though Hà is disappointed to discover he isn't a cowboy and doesn't even have a horse,  Hà's teacher allows her to eat lunch in the classroom to avoid the class bullies, and other people begin to embrace the family with kindness.

Inside Out and Back Again is told in free verse from Hà's point of view.  It is broken up into four parts, each one describing the Kim family's journey towards making a new life for themselves in an unfamiliar country and covers one lunar year.  It is a somewhat autobiographical novel, based in part on the author's own journey from Vietnam as a child.

Hà is a wonderful protagonist, honest (sometimes too honest) and sincere. Lai has eloquently captured all the feelings of loss, frustration and longing that Hà feels throughout her story.  I really felt her despair and the sadness of having to leave so many meaningful things behind, including the young mango tree she had grown from seeds and that was just beginning to mature and bear fruit, a perfect metaphor for Hà's confident sense of identity in Vietnam, left behind like the tree.

I especially liked how Hà's relationship with each of her three brothers was portrayed.  Each brother has a personality of his own and each is clever and resourceful in his own right,  and each finds a specific way of adjusting to life in Alabama that really comes out in her descriptions.

Lai's poetry is beautifully poignant without being sappy, and the images she creates using few words are realistic and compelling.  It is a thought provoking novel about the challenges the Kim family faced by immigrating to a new country and the difficulties of trying to assimilate while still holding on to the their Vietnamese roots.  And by holding on to those roots, Hà recalls for herself and her readers the things she loves about her own country.

Inside Out and Back Again and it's personable young protagonist make this a extremely appealing book to read and appreciate.  Like Listen, Slowly, it is a absorbing story about family, love and belonging.

A Teacher Guide is available for download from the publisher, Scholastic Press.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

MAY IS ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH

#Cybils 2015 Finalist Review: Listen, Slowly by Thanhha Lai

Mai, or Mia as she is called in school, 12, wants nothing more than to hang out with her best friend Montana on Laguna Beach now that summer vacation is finally here, and maybe even speak to her crush and even get to know his name.  Unfortunately, Mai's parents have other plans.  Every summer, her surgeon father travels to the remote mountainous areas Vietnam to fix children's cleft palates and acute burns.  Mom will be staying in Laguna for a big trial she's been working on for three years.  And Mai's grandmother, Bá, has finally heard from the detective she had hired to find someone with information about her husband, Ông, who had died in imprisonment during the Vietnam War.  Someone needs to accompany Bá and look out for her.  After all, she's 79 now and hasn't been back to Vietnam since she and her children fled after the war.

Mai and Bá stay with family, including a tomboy cousin sporting a buzz-cut named Út, who has a fascination with frogs.  While the rest of the village and family warmly welcome Mai and Bá, it's clear the two girls are not liking each other too much.  Mai, who can understand Vietnamese better than she can speak it, finds herself with a translator named Minh, a teenage Vietnamese boy who goes to boarding school in Texas.

It doesn't take long for Mai and Bá to settle in.  Her hope is the Bá will find out what she wants to know and they can get back to Laguna the sooner, the better.  But things don't work out quit like that and as the days go by, Mai settle into a routine as she learns more and more about her Vietnamese roots.  As the pull towards her heritage grows stronger,  she begins to really understand her grandmother's quest for some closure regarding her husband.

And finally, the detective brings news that someone has been found who was with Ông when he was in prison and had left a message for  Bá, a message they must travel to Saigon in order to see.  And little by little, Mai and Út become more tolerant of each other and there is the possibility of a real friendship between them.

At first I wasn't sure I was going to like Listen, Slowly.   Mai struck me as a spoiled, selfish girl who was just interested in herself and her beach life.  She calls her father Dr. Do-Gooder - if it weren't for those kids with cleft palates and burns, he could have take care of Bá and she could have gone to the beach as planned.  Mai is also an overachiever, already throwing SAT possible words into her narration to the point of irritation, so I wasn't sorry when she decided not to do that anymore to pay her mother back for sending her to Vietnam with Bá.

But as the mosquitoes eat her alive, as she suffers a heat rash and a terrible bout of diarrhea, and as this otherwise unknown part of her family embrace her (well, she does have to work a little harder for that to happen with Út), Mai's trip to Vietnam truly becomes a journey of self-discovery for her.  By the end, my whole opinion of Mai changed for the better.

I thought the characters were all believable and I loved cousin Út with her  buzz-cut and frog, as well as love-sick translator Minh.   Mai really turns out to be other than what you think she is.  Thanhha Lai's descriptions of Vietnam all came to life for me - from the crowded hustle and bustle of Saigon to the lush landscape to the quieter village of Mai's relatives, and even the smells of food and other things.

Listen, Slowly is indeed a wonderful story of family, love and belonging and a little bit of comeuppance, too.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL