Papayas, Hà’s favorite fruit, symbolize Hà herself. The papaya tree in Hà’s family’s backyard grew from a seed that Hà flicked outside. Since Hà threw the seed out there, it’s grown exponentially—just as Hà has grown from toddler to a 10-year-old child in the years before the novel begins. At the beginning of the book, Hà excitedly watches her papaya tree bear fruit for the first time. She describes the papayas as growing from thumb-size to the size of her fist, knee, and head. Likening the papayas to parts of her own body reinforces that the papayas are symbols for Hà, and their green, underripe state mirrors Hà youthful, innocent state at the beginning of the novel. When Hà’s family is then forced to flee South Vietnam before the papayas are ripe, this situation represents Hà’s relatively happy childhood in Vietnam being cut short.
Once Hà and her family settle in Alabama, Hà no longer has access to papaya. This is insult added to injury for her, and it makes her feel unmoored and disconnected from her old self, who lived happily in Vietnam and enjoyed fresh fruit regularly. So, Hà isn’t initially impressed when MiSSSisss WaSShington, after learning that papayas are Hà’s favorite fruit, gives Hà a package of dried, sugared papaya for Christmas. It’s nothing like fresh papaya, which highlights the idea that few people, if any, in the U.S. understand Hà or her Vietnamese culture. The dried and sugared papaya is essentially an Americanized repackaging of Vietnamese culture, and Hà resents this immensely. However, Hà ultimately makes do when she discovers that Mother soaked the dried papaya, which dissolved the sugar and rehydrated the papaya into something that better approximates the fresh papaya Hà misses. The papaya’s physical transformation mirrors Hà’s own internal transformation as she starts to feel more secure in her identity as a Vietnamese immigrant living in the U.S. By the novel’s end, Hà is still adjusting, but she’s more comfortable with her new life and with finding approximations of the Vietnamese things she loves.
Papaya Quotes in Inside Out and Back Again
Five papayas
the sizes of
my head,
a knee,
two elbows,
and a thumb
cling to the trunk.
Still green
but promising.
Mother says yellow papaya
tastes lovely
dipped in chili salt.
You children should eat
fresh fruit
while you can.
Brother Vū chops;
the head falls;
a silver blade slices.
Black seeds spill
like clusters of eyes,
wet and crying.
The first hot bite
of freshly cooked rice,
plump and nutty,
makes me imagine
the taste of ripe papaya
although one has nothing
to do with the other.
Yet
on the dining table
on a plate
sit strips of papaya
gooey and damp,
having been soaked in hot water.
The sugar has melted off
leaving
plump
moist
chewy
bites.
Hummm…
Not the same,
but not bad
at all.
Papaya Symbol Timeline in Inside Out and Back Again
