Inside Out And Back Again Thanhha Lai

A refugee can be anyone who has to leave their home due to destruction in their country. When they move far from their homes they have to look for a safe place to live . Leaving to find a new home makes them feel as if their lives are turning “inside out”. The novel Inside out and Back Again Thanhha Lai the author speaks about Ha and her family living in a war. Ha is a 10 year old Vietnamese girl who comes from a single parent and a traditional background. Ha's family decides to flee from their home because of the fear their mom faces in the war. She is afraid of soldiers bringing danger to her family. Ha’s mother decides to flee and now her family becomes refugees. Now Ha and her brothers must go through the unhappiness and struggles that many refugees face.
Learning that you have lost someone who you loved will change your life, because you no longer have the connections and safety you had when that person was still alive.
In the novel “Inside out and back again” Ha was living without her father for most of her life. She had always thought that he would return until she found out he was no longer coming back. In the book mother said “your father is truly gone”(Lia 250). The tradition that ha’s family celebrates is called Tet. This is the first day of the lunar calendar. During Tet they eat lots of food, wear all new clothing and act a certain way. In the text it states “Mother warns how we act today foretells the whole year” (Lia 1). This quotes shows how Ha’s mom explains to the kids however they act during Tet is how their life would
be. When refugees decide to flee they risked their lives to get their family to a safer place. In the novel Ha's mother risked her life to get her four children to a safer place. In “children of war” it stated “sometimes I wish I stayed there watching the war rather than being here safe but without friends”(Brice 26). This decision changes Ha’s family inside out. When Ha’s family escaped onto the ship, she knew their lives were about to change. In “Inside out and Back Again” Thanhha Lai wrote “no one will believe me but I would choose war time in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama”(Lai 195). This saying that Thanhha wrote, states that, she would rather be in a war where her home is than in a safe place that is unknown to her. Many struggles that all refugees face when escaping is if they’re going to make it, learning new languages, being poor or not knowing anyone. In the article “Refugees: Who, Where, and Why,” the author writes, “since early times, large groups of people have been forced to leave their homelands because of persecution and the devastation of their lands” (Gevert 2). Living in a war country full of struggles and having to leave your home to find a new one makes it challenging for many refugees. In Inside Out and Back Again, Ha’s mother made the decision to leave her homeland in South Vietnam to find a safer one, this is a difficult decision that turned her family lives Inside out. Refugees around the world left their homes because of fearing the war. Those refugees face many different challenges. These refugees face challenges when both fleeing and looking for a new home. Ha and her family experience this when they fled South Vietnam in search of a new home. These experiences turned their lives “Inside out”. Forgetting their old lives in starting their new lives changed it “Back again”. There are a lot of challenges when living in a country full of struggles, but there are more challenges that are faced when becoming a refugee.