When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhhà Lai

When Clouds Touch Us follows up the award-winning Inside Out and Back Again with the further adventures of a Vietnamese refugee family in the 1970s.

When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhhà Lai. Harper, 2023, 244 pages

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages 12-15

Starting Over

Thanhhà Lai’s verse memoir, Inside Out and Back Again, tells of her family’s escape from war-torn Vietnam and their tenuous settling in Alabama under the sponsorship of a Christian family. The book won the National Book Award in 2011 and a Newbery Honor in 2012—so it’s taken a while for the author to follow up with a sequel. When Clouds Touch Us continues the story where Inside Out left off: Thanhhà, or Ha for short, has begun to adapt to American life and even has a best friend, Pam. She’s flush with excitement over the “rolling-shoe party” Pam is planning for their mutual birthday when the news comes down from Mother: they’re moving again. Mother has a job opportunity in Texas (which Ha can’t even pronounce), and opportunities must be taken: Someday we will/ own our every hour,/ for now we’re still/ reacting to typhoons/created by others.

So they’re off again: new school, new kids, and challenges all too familiar. Only now Ha is twelve, dropped into the ferment of the middle-grade popularity sweepstakes with puberty stirred into the mix. Also, it’s two years since the fall of Saigon and news is leaking out about certain unsavory American acts in Vietnam, such as the My Lai massacre. Ha has been exposed to evil, but now she must confront it. Mother, as always, speaks wisdom: Contemplate on yourself/ until you’re a solid anchor,/ then ensure kindnesss to family/ then society then earth.

How to Think in American

In her author note, Thanhhà Lai explains that the prose-poem style is meant to suggest Ha’s thought patterns as she adapts to American culture while thinking in Vietnamese. “But notice how her language has become wordier as she acquires English.” Young readers may not notice that, and many of them may struggle with the mix of free-form English and Vietnamese syntax. I believe it’s worth the struggle, but strongly suggest reading the two books together. The author’s aim is to communicate the massive challenge every refugee faces when starting over in a new land, and she succeeds beautifully.

Consideration:

• Ha gets her period while at school and her teacher tactfully wraps her in a sweater. This is so delicately handled readers may not know what’s going on.

Overall rating: 4.25 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 5

Read more about our ratings here.

Also at Redeemed Reader

• Reviews: We’ve posted two reviews of Inside Out and Back again: Janie’s and Betsy’s. Betsy’s review includes some excellent discussion questions which would apply to Clouds as well.
• Reviews: We liked Thanhhà Lai’s YA novel, Butterfly Yellow, and her picture book, One Hundred Years of Happiness.
• Resource: See our booklist of memoirs in honor of We Love Memoirs Day.

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