(Analysis: Introduction and one body paragraphs)

Grace Li

English 702

September 27, 2024

In the book Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai, the main character is a young girl named Hà who fled Saigon with her family during the Vietnam War and started a new life in Alabama. Hà’s life was turned inside out as she carried her pain from her homeland to a completely different place, with a different culture and religion. As she adjusted to her new life and faced the bullies at school with the help of brothers, her life turned back again. In this essay, many perspectives of Hà change, and one of the most important ones is  her wishes (from based on herself to based on others). Throughout the story, Hà changes from being a young and naïve child into a more caring and mature individual.

Before Hà moves to America, she is a young girl making childish wishes for herself, but as she settles in her new home, Hà becomes much more mature and demonstrates her growth through changing the contents of wishes to be for others, rather than for herself. When Hà is pondering what she craves for her birthday in the beginning of the book in Saigon, she thinks, “Wishes I kept to myself: // Wish I could do what boys do […] // Wish I could let my hair grow, […] // Wish I could lose my chubby cheeks, // Wish I could stay calm […] // Wish Mother would stop / chiding me to stay calm, […] // Wish I had a sister (Lai, 30).” These thoughts show how immature and childish Hà’s dreams are. Some of the wishes are for her own physical appearance which is not comparable to the seriousness of war. Those desires are nice but frivolous and demonstrates she is not yet thinking of others. After moving to America and enduring being bullied, the contents of her wishes change. She thinks, “I wish // Brother Khôi wouldn’t / keep inside / how he endures / the hours in school, // that Mother wouldn’t / hide her bleeding fingers, // that Brother Quang wouldn’t / be so angry after work // […] // I wish / I were / still / smart (158,159).” This section of the poem shows how Hà has grown up. She put her wishes for her family first and herself second, showing how her priorities have changed. She is no longer the young, innocent, naïve girl who makes wishes for herself, but a mature girl who notices the pain that her family endured and decides to care about her family more than herself.