Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again is a verse novel for ages 9–12 that chronicles ten-year-old Hà’s escape from Saigon during the 1975 fall of South Vietnam and her family’s resettlement in Alabama. Through fragmented yet vivid poems, Lai captures Hà’s grief over leaving home—her papaya tree, her father’s absence—and her struggles to adapt to a foreign culture. The narrative balances raw vulnerability with moments of levity, such as Hà bargaining with the “rice cooker god” or defiantly growing scallions in an Alabama winter. Key historical details, like the ethical weight of burning personal documents to evade communist soldiers, are conveyed through sensory immediacy rather than exposition, making complex geopolitics accessible to young readers.
