98. When Clouds Touch Us

When Clouds Touch Us. Thanhhà Lại. 2023. [May] 256 pages. [Library]

First sentence: First refugee year
I didn't know to ask
for a day-of-birth party.
Last year Mother reminded us
all Vietnamese gain an age
together at Tet.
Our flip of the lunar calendar
was celebrated back home
as if combining Christmas,
western New Year's,
Thanksgiving, July 4th,
plus millions of days of birth.
This year,
Pam and I, April babies,
will invite twenty friends
to a rolling-shoe party
like Amy's last autumn.
I vow fewer
purple quail eggs
on my swollen knees
while Pam plots around
her religion's no-music rule.
Pam insists on April 10th,
my day, not hers,
to mark my first party.
So like her.
We were each
a maple seed,
spinning unclaimed
until we rooted
as best friends.

Premise/plot: When Clouds Touch Us is the sequel to Inside Out and Back Again (2011), a Newbery Honor book. Hà, our heroine, is settling into Alabama and loving life (mostly) with her best friend. But all is upended when her mother decides to move the family to Texas for better employment opportunities. Hà is crushed. Making friends--or a friend--and settling down in school wasn't easy in Alabama a year (or so) ago, and she fears that Texas will prove equally difficult. This verse novel follows Hà and her family for about a year--give or take a month. 

My thoughts: Is it easier to move from Alabama to Texas than to move across the world from Vietnam to the United States? Maybe. Maybe not. Both books are coming of age novels written in verse. Both capture the uncertainty of her life and complexity of emotions. Both books are set in the 1970s. I have not read the first book since 2012 when I initially reviewed it. I am relying on my review of the first book to help me out here. I have, of course, just read the second book.

I wish I'd taken the time to reread the first book. (But I didn't). I liked the second book. I don't know that I loved it. I think the potential for love might have been there if I'd read the books back to back. If I was more invested in this family and their story.

© 2023 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews