Inside Out & Back Again

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.