Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai is about a young girl named Ha who lives in Vietnam with a father who is missing in action during the Vietnam War. Her mother, Ha, and her three brothers flee across the sea to Alabama after the fall of Saigon. It is in Alabama where Ha discovers that life is not the same as life in Vietnam. Leaving her papaya tree behind, she mourns the loss of her father and struggles to blend in with her classmates in Alabama as they call her racist names and bully her for the way she looks and where she comes from, Vietnam.
For our study, we'll be reading four poems from the book: The Outside, Sadder Laugh, Rainbow, and Black and White and Yellow and Red.
The Outside
September 1
Starting tomorrow
everyone must
leave the house.
Mother starts sewing
at a factory;
Brother Quang begins
repairing cars.
The rest of us
must go to school,
repeating the last grade,
left unfinished.
Brother V wants
to be a cook
or teach martial arts,
not waste a year
as the oldest senior.
Mother says
one word:
College.
Brother Khôi
gets an old bicycle to ride,
but Mother says
I’m too young for one
even though I’m
a ten-year-old
in the fourth grade,
when everyone else
is nine.
Mother says,
Worry instead
about getting sleep
because from now on
no more naps.
You will eat lunch
at school
with friends.
What friends?
You’ll make some.
What if I can’t?
You will.
What will I eat?
What your friends eat.
But what will I eat?
Be surprised.
I hate surprises.
Be agreeable
Not without knowing
what I'm agreeing to.
Mother sighs,
walking away.
Sadder Laugh
September 2, Morning
School!
I wake up with
dragonflies
zipping through
my gut.
I eat nothing. I take each step toward school evenly,
trying to hold my stomach
steady.
It helps that
the morning air glides cool
like a constant washcloth
against my face.
Deep breaths.
I’m the first student in class.
My new teacher has brown curls
looped tight to her scalp
like circles in a beehive.
She points to her chest:
MiSSS SScott,
saying it three times,
each louder
with ever more spit.
I repeat, MiSSS SScott,
careful to hiss every s.
She doesn’t seem impressed.
I tap my own chest:
Hà.
She must have heard
ha,
as in funny ha-ha-ha.
She fakes a laugh.
I repeat, Hà,
and wish I knew
enough English
to tell her
to listen for
the diacritical mark,
this one directing
the tone
downward.
My new teacher tilts
her head back,
fakes
an even sadder laugh.
Rainbow
September 2, Midmorning
I face the class.
MiSSS SScott speaks.
Each classmate says something.
I don’t understand,
but I see.
Fire hair on skin dotted with spots.
Fuzzy dark hair on skin shiny as lacquer.
Hair the color of root on milky skin.
Lots of braids on milk chocolate.
White hair on a pink boy.
Honey hair with orange ribbons on see-through skin.
Hair with barrettes in all colors on bronze bread.
I’m the only
straight black hair
on olive skin.
Black and White and Yellow and Red
September 2, 11:30 a.m.
The bell rings.
Everyone stands.
I stand.
They line up;
so do I.
Down a hall.
Turn left.
Take a tray.
Receive food.
Sit.
On one side
of the bright, noisy room,
light skin.
Other side,
dark skin.
Both laughing,
chewing,
as if it never occurred
to them
someone medium
would show up.
I don’t know where to sit
any more than
I know how to eat
the pink sausage
snuggled inside bread
shaped like a corncob,
smeared with sauces
yellow and red.
I think
they are making fun
of the Vietnamese flag
until I remember
no one here likely knows
that flag's colors.
I put down the tray
and wait
in the hallway.