Having to leave your loved home is hard for everyone. In Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, For 10-year-old Kim Ha flees Saigon she feels the same emotions. War forced her family to flee to America to find a loving and strange new place. Kim finds a new family to guide her through a new journey despite new struggles and hardships. Thesis: In Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again Kim Ha’s thoughts and actions show her resilience and spirit. In Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again Kim Ha’s thoughts and speech prove that she is a spirited person. When Ha first arrives in Alabama she sees cowboy and immediately thinks positively about how nice and amazing he will be. In the text “I love him immediately and imagine hi to be good-hearted …show more content…
After a long day of school, Ha feels she is limited to doing things and hates this fact and feels she is good enough to do whatever she wants. In the text, “I HATE BEING TOLD I CANT DO SOMETHING BECAUSE I'M A GIRL”(Lai, page:214). What this quote shows is that Ha hates being told stuff because of the way she looks our her background but, even when being told things she proves to be confident and resilient and can do whatever she sets her mind to. This quote truly shows how she is resilient because she proves to everyone later on in the story that she can learn English, she can adapt to a new life, can make friends, whatever she sets her mind to. Furthermore, Words can hurt especially means one’s from other people but Ha is fed up with this and decides to turn the tables. In the text, “My heart lifting , I run and shout bully, coward, pink snot face”(Lai, 219). What this quote shows is how Ha will bounce back even with the things said to her or what has been in her life that has caused difficulties or challenges and no matter what kind of these challenges happen she will never back down in fear and accept that life is full of challenges and that she needs to learn from them, especially in her new life. This quote also shows how Ha does not let uncomfortable things stick with her and no matter what they are she will let them go and not worry about
South Vietnam no longer exists” (LAI 91). Ha and her family emigrate from Vietnam to the U.S
In the book “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien writes about his experience before and during the Vietnamese War, tells stories about his troop, and their lives before and after the war. He illustrates about how his life changed because of the war, and emphasizes on how the war is so cruel and has no moral at all. His stories involve a lot about Vietnamese War. If people read his story superficially, they will say it is definitely a war story, but he argues that his book is actually about love (81). Although his story looks like a war story, it is actually a loved story because his stories are either about his loved ones or dedicated to his loved ones.
In A Viet Cong Memoir, we receive excellent first hands accounts of events that unfolded in Vietnam during the Vietnam War from the author of this autobiography: Truong Nhu Tang. Truong was Vietnamese at heart, growing up in Saigon, but he studied in Paris for a time where he met and learned from the future leader Ho Chi Minh. Truong was able to learn from Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ideas and gain a great political perspective of the conflicts arising in Vietnam during the war. His autobiography shows the readers the perspective of the average Vietnamese citizen (especially those involved with the NLF) and the attitudes towards war with the United States. In the book, Truong exclaims that although many people may say the Americans never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam — it is irrelevant.
In the book Inside out and back again, written by Lai, is a story about Ha and her mother, father, teacher, and classmates. Ha lives in Vietnam in 1975 and eventually moves to Alabama because of war. Her story is just like a refugees story. They both left their country in hope of finding safety. All refugees have struggles they need to overcome.
The Vietnam War was a long battle of seventeen long years. There were many causes leading up to this traumatic event. The U.S. got involved because of the spread of communism throughout Asia. The novel, The Things They Carried is about how morality can change both how a soldier thinks and feels. In Tim O’Brien’s historical fiction novel, The Things They Carried, both the physical and geographical surroundings shape the psychological traits of the characters during the following events: Mary Anne’s disappearance, the death of Curt Lemon and Mitchell Sander’s unbelievable story.
In the novel, Inside Out and Back Again, Thanhha Lai tells a story of a 10-year-old girl, Ha, and her family’s experience of living in Vietnam and having to flee to Alabama due to war. Background Info: When fleeing a country, many refugees experience the universal refuge of becoming refugees because they are forced to leave their destroyed homes and travel to a new, different country. This could turn a person’s life “Inside Out” which means that their lives is impacting negatively. Preview 3 points: 1. Many refugees around the world experience losing family members as they flee their homes, which Ha also experienced through losing her father.(explain wym by loss of family member) 2.
Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.
As the L.A. Times reports, “Until recently, the county’s most visible Asian cluster was Little Saigon, once-sleepy central distract transformed by Vietnam War refugees into a bustling shopping and dining destination.” By working together as a community, the Vietnamese managed to overcome their social barriers and achieve great successes in Orange County, which was an amazing feat for a refugee group that started out with nothing. Little Saigon is a reminder to the Vietnamese Americans, of a history and story of a people who lost their homes, families, and dignity and came in 1975 to get it all back. It was a place where successful people willingly scrubbed toilets, pumped gas, and washed dishes came to reclaim their lives. As Quach Nhut, now a prosperous pharmacist in Westminster, listened to the Fall of Saigon on the radio while he was in the refugee camp, said, “I thought Saigon was lost forever.”
The Vietnam War, the war that took the lives of many soldiers and left them with emotional wounds and physical scars, while also leaving many innocents to suffer and over two million from both sides to die. In Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, we read about the experiences of soldiers during this war and how some died, how some carried grief and guilt until after the war, and how some had to endure physical and mental wounds post-war. In this work of fiction, we get to dive into a deeper understanding of the fictional soldiers who lived through the war Although The Things They Carried is a work of fiction, it coveys truths about the Vietnam war through accounts of fictional characters who experienced the long-lasting impacts and
Finally, Ha was done hiding in the shadows and being teased because she was different. She surprised Pink Boy and his jerks with her insults since she was always quiet. Her newfound confidence led her to stand up for herself on more occasions. “Pink Boy plows toward me/…When he’s close enough/for me to see the white arm hair,/I shift my upper body/to the left./… A thud./ Pink Boy writhes on the pavement” (Lai 225).
In spite of the tribulations mentioned prior, refugees lives will turn “back again” as they commence to feel a sense of normality once they have attained the skill to become resilient towards said tribulations. Resilience channels itself in many forms, such as standing up to a tormentor. This is how Ha becomes resilient when she attains the intrepidity to defend herself against a tormentor that attends her school, which she denominates as”Pink Boy” due to the actuality that he is an albino. This young man has ridiculed Ha predominantly for her physical appearance, which has humbled her to a significant extent. The tormenting involved verbal derogation and invasion of personal space.
Regret is a powerful emotion that has the ability to scar someone for the rest of their life. Moments of regret can come from relationships, self-made decisions and life changing events. The idea of regret also applies to “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien. Although these two literary pieces are very different in many ways, both authors describe the experience of the Vietnam War as a time of regretful decisions that negatively impacted people of both the American side and the Vietnamese side. Both authors tell a story about a character that recalls of flashbacks of the war, where they grieve over the past decisions that have affected them for the rest of their life.
In both the film and short story, the characters go on a journey with hope for a better future. In The Boat, Mai was sent away from her home in communist Vietnam in hope for a better home and new life. After the war North Vietnam dominated, they started controlling the south and introducing their communism and forcing people to comply with the new rules. Mai’s father was sent to a re-education camp where he was forced to become a communist.
She faces racism, discrimination, loneliness, and, over time, a growing sense of love for her new home. Ha’s life is turned “inside out and back again”. Before Ha had to flee Saigon, she was headstrong and selfish, but she was also a girl who loved her mother and couldn't wait to grow up. She wanted to be able to do something before her older brothers did it, and do it better. But most of all, Ha wanted to fit in, to be liked.
“Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” Nam Le’s “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” is categorized in “ethnic story” narrated his Vietnamese life in order to meet an upcoming deadline even though finally he can’t submit his story because his father burns his work. Throughout the story, Nam the narrator talks about “the past” which he experiences when he was young including the recent experience that he has got from his father reunion. Not only does the story tell us about the past which, but it also shows a connection of time between past, present, and future. Likewise, the story shows the relationship between son and father which is the main theme of this story; and shows how the past is important and affect to them differently. Also, the story of the past could lead to the end of the story that can be interpreted like a prediction of the direction of their relationship in the future.