Book Award Winner's Tale Echoes Those Told By Other Vietnamese
Refugees Thanhha Lai was 10 years old the day in 1975 that North
Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the presidential
palace in Saigon and fear spread through the city on rumors that
Communist troops were about to begin a massacre. Lai recalls
fleeing with her eight older siblings and her mother to the
nearby port and boarding a crowded South Vietnamese Navy ship
that then headed to sea. The family was leaving its home in
South Vietnam for an uncertain voyage. But for a young girl, "it
seemed like a great, huge adventure," says Lai. "I thought it
was a vacation." There were sharks and dolphins in the South
China Sea. She brushed her teeth with salt water. Earlier this
month, Lai won the National Book Award for Young People's
Literature for Inside Out & Back Again, her novel, told in
verse, based on her family's escape. Lai's story of her family's
flight echoes tales that several Vietnamese families and U.S.
sailors told NPR last year in