Thanhha Lai: Hi. I am Thanhhà Lại and I'm the author of Inside Out and Back Again. I'm going to tell you a little bit about how I came to write this book and then I'll read an excerpt to you. The story came directly from a very important year in my life. When I was 10 in 1975, that's 36 years ago, the Vietnam war ended and my family and I had to move to Alabama. I was in the fourth grade and didn't speak English, and I was the first Asian any of my classmates had seen outside of television. So you can imagine how strange it was for me and them to end up in the same school.

I wrote the novel in prose poem to reflect what it's like to think in Vietnamese because Vietnamese is based on Chinese and as you probably know Chinese is based on images, not so much on words. So they would write a character that looked like a picture and that denotes the meaning of what they're saying. I wanted to convey what it's like to think in images. And the long wordy sentences in English just didn't match what was going on inside this character's head. So then I switched to just quick, concise, crisp phrases to convey her emotions. And that matched perfectly. And I ended up with poems instead of sentences.

Here's a poem entitled "Black and White and Yellow and Red" that describes my first time in the school cafeteria.

"The bell rings. Everyone stands. I stand. They lined up. So do I. Down a hall, turn left. Take a tray, receive food. Sit. On one side of the bright noisy room, light skin. Other side dark skin. Both laughing, chewing, as if it never occurred to them someone medium would show up. I don't know where to sit any more than I know how to eat the pink sausage snuggled inside bread, shaped like a corn cob. Smeared with sauces yellow and red. I think they are making fun of the Vietnamese flag until I remember no one here likely knows that flag's colors. I put down the tray and wait in the hallway."

Here's the next poem called "Loud Outside."

"Another bell, another line. This time outside. Every part of the rainbow surrounds me, shouting, pushing. A pink boy with white hair on his head and white eyebrows and white eyelashes pulls my arm hair. Laughter. It's true my arm hair grows so long and black. Maybe he is curious about my long, black arm hair, like I was curious about the golden fuzz on the arm of the rescue ship sailor. He pokes my cheek. Howls from everyone. He pokes my chest. I see nothing but squeezed eyes, twisted mouths. No. They are not curious. I wanna pluck out every white hair to see if the boys scalp matches the pink of his face. I wish this, but walk away."