babyhippoface's Reviews > Inside Out & Back Again

Read this straight through in one evening. It repeatedly put me in mind of an outstanding teacher at my school, whose family immigrated to the United States when she was about Ha's age. When we had a "Guess That Baby Picture" contest at school, she brought a school photo of herself around the age of 8, because that was all she had. There were no baby photos of her, no visual memories of her early years; they were too poor for photographs. All through this book I kept thinking, "I wonder if this is what it was like for her," and "I have to give her a copy of this book, see what she thinks of it."

Me? I thought it was wonderful. I am always drawn to novels written in free verse. The form forces a talented author to show clarity and emotion with minimal language, and Lai's is just beautiful. It helped me understand what it would feel like to move from a familiar, beloved homeland to a new country with foreign customs, words, foods, and faces, to suddenly feel stupid because you cannot communicate verbally. Entitled Feel Dumb, this poem expresses that feeling succinctly:

MiSSS SScott / points to me, / then to the letters / of the English alphabet.

I say / A B C and so on.

She tells the class to clap.

I frown.

MiSSS SScott / points to the numbers / along the wall.

I count up to twenty.

The class claps / on its own.

I'm furious, / unable to explain / I already learned / fractions / and how to purify / river water.

So this is / what dumb / feels like.

I hate, hate, hate it.

Because of Lai's insight, I gain insight myself. I can place myself in Ha's shoes in that moment. I feel what she is feeling. And I hurt for her. I get a sense of how must it feel to be physically and verbally attacked because I look different from everyone else in the room, because I cannot speak their words, because I practice a different religion, because I am an outsider with no idea of how I can make them understand me, know me. I am able to see how even good intentions can hurt, as the situation in the above poem and several others demonstrate.

There is so much pain in this little novel, but oh, so much hope. Just beautiful.