Thanhha Lai

Biography

Thanhha Lai was born in Vietnam and fled with her family in 1975 after the fall of Saigon — the same event depicted in the novel. She was ten years old, the same age as Ha. The family was sponsored by a church family in Alabama. Lai eventually attended college, earned an MFA in creative writing, and became a teacher and writer. Inside Out and Back Again is her debut novel. She has said that writing the book required returning to the experience of being ten years old and not knowing English — the vulnerability, the shame, and also the extraordinary attention to the physical world that displacement produces.

Thanhha Lai at a glance