Inside Out and Back Again
Thanhha Lai (2011)
“A girl flees Saigon with her family in 1975 and must rebuild herself — name, language, and all — in a small Alabama town that has never seen anyone like her.”
Character Analysis
Ha is the most fully realized child narrator in contemporary middle-grade literature precisely because Lai gives her a flaw that is also a gift: Ha is impulsive, competitive, and sometimes mean. She is not a saint displaced from paradise. She is a specific, slightly difficult ten-year-old who notices everything, resents unjustice fiercely, and loves particular things with an intensity that survives displacement. Her resilience is not noble — it is stubborn and specific. She plants seeds in wrong soil. She tends things that may not grow. This is what the novel means by resilience.
Vietnamese in her inner voice, struggling English in public speech. The gap between internal fluency and external incompetence is the novel's central irony.