Today
I had read an entire book, gone to the bank, spent almost $150, and cried a
half dozen times before I’d eaten breakfast! The tears spilt were mostly in
response to Inside Out & Back Again,
the book I read in my car in a Walmart parking lot after fleeing my
house-sitting house early in the morning before the cleaning ladies arrived (the
other ones were shed while picking out a Father’s day card in Walmart and feeling
deep gratitude that my dad was nothing like the dads to whom the greeting card
companies catered (beer-drinking, gun-slinging, womanizing, deer-hunting, lazy,
TV-watching slugs)).
This
was definitely my favorite Newbery in a long while. The author, Thanhha Lai,
uses narrative poetry to tell the mostly autobiographical tale of her
10-year-old year that starts in war-torn Saipon, Vietnam and ends in Alabama,
where she and her family have settled as refugees. My sister has worked
extensively with the Burmese refugees in her city (sometimes I call her the
Katniss of the Karen (the ethnic group in Burma that has mostly relocated to
cities in the U.S.)) and I love the culture they bring to her
community. Reading about Ha’s experiences in Vietnam and Alabama made me want
to love and get to know people more, especially those different from me. After
living in the United States for a few months, Ha and her family have
experienced some vandalism and bullying from people in their neighborhood, so .
. .
Mother
decides
we
must meet
our
neighbors.
Our
cowboy [their sponsor] leads,
giving
us each a cowboy hat
to
be tilted
while
saying,
Good mornin’.
Only
I wear the hat.
In
the house
to
our right
a
bald man
closes
his door.
Next
to him
a
woman
with
yellow hair
slams
hers.
Next
to her
shouts
reach us
behind a door unopened.
Redness
crawls across
my
brothers’ faces.
Mothers
pats their backs.
Our
cowboy leads us
to
the house on our left.
An
older woman
throws
up her arms
and
hugs us.
We’re
so startled
we
stand like trees.
She
points to her chest:
MiSSSisss WaSShington.
I, of course, love Mrs. Washington
from that moment on, and the handful of others that are kind and welcoming to
Ha and her family. I loved experiencing Ha’s emotions and sensing her
frustrations and successes. This truly is a beautiful book.
