ipl-logo

Inside Out And Back Again By Thanhha Lai

539 Words3 Pages

In the novel, Inside Out and Back Again, by Thanhha Lai, Ha and her family had to flee their home in Vietnam because of Communists invading. The years of fleeing their home and getting settled in their new one take place from 1975 to 1976. Ha, and her family had to travel quite a bit and had to wait a long while until they eventually came to where they are now. They escaped on a ship and were rescued by Americans where they were taken to Guam and then to America. Refugees go through many challenges and lose many things that are important to them. Ha had to leave behind things such as her home, her father, and items like her papaya tree. Refugees have to learn how things work in new places and might have to learn new languages. They have to learn how to interact with people and get jobs or go to school. Ha has changed throughout the novel by what she was like in Vietnam, how she was when she was finding her home, and what …show more content…

Ha liked her home in Vietnam and she had different traits there than the traits she has later in the novel. Ha shows that she is stubborn when she taps her toe to the floor on Tet even though a male is supposed to rise first in the morning. Ha also proves that she is selfish when she didn’t use all the money Mother gave her for food for the family, she uses it for sweets. “...and tap my big toe to the tile floor first.” (Lai, pg. 3) “I still buy less pork, allowing myself just the fried dough.” (Lai, pg. 20) These quotes show that Ha was stubborn and selfish while she lived in Vietnam. Ha was dishonest when she tapped her toe on the floor and it was an important tradition for the family because it is supposed to bring good luck. Also, when Ha was selfish and bought sweets for herself instead of buying all the pork, it was a bad thing to do because the prices were higher and her family

Show More
Related

  • Don T Blame The Eater By Zinczenko

    232 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the article "Don’t blame the eater" written by Zinczenko, he argues that fast food is the main reason why so many teenagers are suffering from obesity in United States. He explains that many companies will use advertisements to deceive customers. For example, a company’s website offers a chicken salad with less than four hundred calories per serving; however, they don’t label everything that the salad has In the first label. They will use separate labels in the products that the salad has on it, so the costumer gets confused and thinks that he is actually eating a four hundred calories salad that is "healthy". However, he is actually eating a seven or more hundred calories meal.

    Read More

  • Drums Girls And Dangerous Pie By American Sonnenblick

    865 Words  | 4 Pages

    The novel Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick is a story about a typical family in a present day town. Steven, the oldest kid in the family goes through a tough time in his life when his little brother Jeffrey gets leukemia, a type of cancer. Steven’s parents are also affected. The dad starts to not talk to Steven, and his co workers. The mom has to stop working and drive Jeffrey to the hospital often for treatments.

    Read More

  • Black Like Me By John Howard Griffin

    444 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, Griffin observed racism firsthand. But he can never fully experience being a Negro, he only changed his skin for 6 weeks. These are point from the book that prove this. In the book Griffin was a white man who wanted to change his skin color to experience racism and see what a Negro goes through.

    Read More

  • So I Ain T No Good Girl By Sharon Flakes

    404 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the story “So I ain’t no Good Girl “written by Sharon Flakes. I felt like the scene was very realistic, the characters made the scene very realistic by the way they were acting. The author described the scene pretty good when she said: “if I scream at him the whole street could hear me”. I can also relate to the scene in my everyday life. A boy and his girlfriend where at a bus stop with some other girls, And Raheem starts to act a little flirter with the good girls who made his girlfriend kind of upset about the situation, so she tries to talk about it, but he got mad at her and ended up making out with the good girl.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Refugees In Inside Out & Back Again

    1435 Words  | 6 Pages

    Refugees are people who have been forced to leave their countries in order to escape war, persecution, and natural disaster. Most refugees are ordinary people coming from ordinary places. One of these ordinary people, Kim Hà from South Vietnam, was created as a fictional character for the novel Inside Out & Back Again, written by Thanhha Lai, who modeled it after her own life as a refugee. Lai, just like her character Hà, was forced to flee her home during the Vietnam War, and ended up in the United States, in the state of Alabama. While Hà is a fictional character, Lai gives her certain characteristics so readers of her novel will realize the struggles refugees have to face, and the ways they must recover from them.

    Read More

  • Walk On By Brent Staples

    1219 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Power Behind “Just Walk on By” In Brent Staples article “Just Walk on By”, Staples shares his thoughts on the way marginalized groups interact. He uses his own experiences as a young African American man to shed light on how people can have implied biases that affect the way they treat other people. Staples does this to demonstrate how society develops preconceived notions in the minds of individuals about marginalized groups, primarily African American men, which are often a flawed representation of the people within these groups. The rhetoric he uses is key to developing an understanding persona and an emotional appeal that exposes the implied biases of people without alienating or offending the audience, to whom-- among others-- he attributes these biases.

    Read More

  • Im Sorry I M Sorry By Alex Flinn

    1479 Words  | 6 Pages

    The author Alex Flinn, mostly creates an accurate and unbiased view of the topic in the following way(s), by showing how domestic abuse has hurt many people with the cycle of abuse, types of abusers(Mario), and different views of abuse (Journal to Narrator), but fails to accurately portray different types of abuse in the following way(s) by showing how the Dolphins are a big impact on Nick’s life and why it changed the way he realized he was hurting Caitlyn verbally and physically. In many ways there are many children that had grown up with being abused either mostly verbally or physically. But as the years go on for some children that cycle continues on that they carry on the reason to abuse the loved ones. Flinn has shown many different

    Read More

  • Sweet And Respectful Analysis

    611 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lessons from the Culture Every year we see family emigrate to other countries, and they face many challenges. The stories “Sweet, Sour, and Resentful”, by Firoozeh Dumas, and from “Fish Cheeks”, by Amy Tan, share similar cultures and really interesting stories. Also, both families from the essay share several challenges that they are face when they move to the United States of America. The two families share many similarities; however, they differ in to keeping their culture, showing openness, and teaching a lesson from their culture to others.

    Read More

  • Going To Work By Nancy Mercado

    781 Words  | 4 Pages

    On September 11, 2001, tragedy struck the city of New York. On that fateful day, two airplanes were hijacked by terrorists and flew straight into the twin towers. Each tower fell completely to the ground, taking thousands of lives with it and injuring thousands more. Not only did that day leave thousands of families without their loved ones, it also left an entire city and an entire country to deal with the aftermath of the destruction. Poet, Nancy Mercado, worries that one day people will forget that heartbreaking day.

    Read More

  • Examples Of A Universal Refugee Experience

    1083 Words  | 5 Pages

    The lives of refugees are turned “inside out” out when they are forced to flee because they have to leave the only home they have ever known and try to figure out a way to leave their old lives behind. They are not leaving their country because they want to but because they are forced to and it can feel like

    Read More

  • The Glass Castle By Rex Walls And Rose Mary Walls

    1706 Words  | 7 Pages

    We see her selfishness when her kids are hungry and notice food has been missing. The only person who knew who stole it was the person who took it. The girls later find out that their mother had been hiding food to eat for herself. We also notice her selfishness when she doesn’t feel like working. She doesn’t like teaching.

    Read More

  • Same Kind Of Different As Me By Ron Hall And Denver Moore

    704 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the novel, Same Kind of Different as Me, by Ron Hall and Denver Moore, two mens’ lives changed in ways that they never dreamed of when their paths crossed unexpectedly. Although the book took place in the 1950s, where slavery had already been outlawed, Denver grew up in virtual slavery in the sharecropping industry in Louisiana. He eventually decided he wanted a better life for himself and jumped onto a train headed to Dallas, where he ended up roaming the streets as an unemployed homeless man for years. One day, he entered a homeless shelter for lunch and met Ron and Ron’s wife Deborah, a rich couple that was serving food. The three became extremely close over time, and when Deborah was diagnosed with cancer, their relationship became even

    Read More

  • Black Like Me By Sandra Lee Waldroop

    1486 Words  | 6 Pages

    Finding one passion could be tricky. Sometimes we confuse passion with skills, passion is something that you do and enjoy no matter how tired or even if it doesn’t make you a millionaire. Skills are something that you are good at but you don’t enjoy, one will continue on this path because we need to pay our bills. This doesn’t make it right or wrong but we should be happy with ourselves doing what we enjoy.

    Read More

  • The Universal Refugee Experience In Ha's Inside Out And Back Again

    1109 Words  | 5 Pages

    The novel “Inside Out and Back Again” describes the life of a family of refugees searching to find home. It describes the highs and the lows of day-to-day life for the family, perfectly describing the universal refugee experience. The universal refugee experience is an umbrella term used to describe the myriad of trials and tribulations refugees endure as they move to a foreign place. These are experiences that all or most refugees typically go through in their process of finding a new home. Ha’s journey is a perfect example of the universal refugee experience.

    Read More

  • The Summer I Turned Pretty By Jenny Han Belly

    1537 Words  | 7 Pages

    1. In the book The summer I turned pretty by Jenny Han Belly is the protagonist of the story and Conrad is the antagonist along with Cam and Jeremiah. Some of the minor characters are Cam, Susan and Belly’s mom. Belly is a young 15 year old white female that turns 16 towards the end of the book. Belly has long brown hair, lots of freckles, and is as tan as the sand on a Mexican beach.

    Read More

More about Inside Out And Back Again By Thanhha Lai

Open Document