ABSTRACT
Thanhha Lai’s (2011) Inside Out and Back Again centers on Hà, an adolescent who flees Vietnam following the Fall of Saigon and immigrates to the United States with her mother and brothers. Told in lyrical verse, the novel invites readers to consider the confusion, frustration, wonder, and possibility of moving to a new place that possesses unfamiliar cultural norms, practices, and languages. This chapter uses the novel as a focal text and draws upon theories of space, place, and navigational identity to encourage students and teachers to examine how identities are constructed in the in-between spaces we experience as we move (literally and figuratively) from one location to another. Using place-based pedagogies that honor the prominence of situated communities in the creation, maintenance, and revision of our individual ways of knowing, seeing, and doing, the chapter presents classroom activities designed to encourage a peeling back of the many layers of influence on our identities.
