Inside Out And Back Again Analysis

A refugee, by definition, is a person who has been forced to leave their country due to various reasons, whether it be to escape war or religious/racial persecution, to seek refuge in another country. Seeking refuge usually isn’t easy for refugees, as in doing so, they may lose friends and family, and must adapt to live a lifestyle completely foreign to them. A prime example of a refugee is in the poetry novel, Inside Out & Back Again, by Thanhha Lai. In the novel, the main character, Ha, must leave her home in Saigon, due to an ongoing war in Vietnam. This results in her having to find a new home in the United States, where she must adjust to a new school, new food, new people and a new language that she has no idea how to speak. The title

Another quote showing this is in “Amethyst Ring,” where she writes, “Mother wants to sell the amethyst ring Father brought back from America,where he trained in the navy before I was born. She wants to buy needles and thread, fabric and sandals from the camp’s black market. I have never seen her without this purple rock.” This quote shows how Ha’s mother is so desperate for money that she is willing to sell something as precious as the ring her husband, whom she hasn’t seen in nearly a decade, gave to her. Ha’s life eventually comes “back again” as she and her family makes a new home for themselves in Alabama. One example of them going “back again” is in “NOW!”, where she writes, “Brother Quang takes us to the grocery store. Mother buys everything to make egg rolls for a coming holiday when Americans eat a turkey the size of a baby.” This shows how their lives are coming “back again”, as Ha and her family are now able to buy food without having to worry about having to get just barely enough food or using too much money, as they did back in Saigon. Another

Many of these refugees across the world have to leave their homes to avoid suffering in their countries with things such as racial and religious persecution. One example describing how the lives of refugees are turned “inside out” as they flee their homes is in “Refugee Transitions’ World of Difference Benefit Luncheon”, where Til Gurung says “Thus, they initiated an ethnic cleansing program to force us from our homes. We suffered in our country Bhutan because we did not speak the language or practice the religion or culture of the royal family. Many of us were tortured and imprisoned. We had no choice but to flee Nepal to save our lives. After twenty years in the Nepali refugee camps, we saw that there was no possibility of returning home.” This example shows how since the Bhutanese community had a Nepali heritage and culture, they were being driven out of their homes, facing imprisonment and torture, and being forced to seek refuge elsewhere for so long, that there was almost no chance that they would be going back to Bhutan, turning their lives “inside out”. Another instance showing the idea that the refugees’ lives are turning “inside out” as they flee their homes is in the article “Migrant Crisis”, as it says, “ He left Somalia