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The Washing Room
Alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780615791357
The Washing Room: A Story of Stories, is creative nonfiction memoir about inter-generational trauma. My Ngoc weaves together a series of short stories loosely centered on her own narrative: growing up in a refugee community and then stepping into an Ivy League college, and all the painful moments resultant from that transition. She takes the reader through a range of experiences, from working as a nail technician to being a student at Harvard.
Sometimes deeply disgusting, sometimes wonderfully detached, and always tinged with poignancy, the vignettes add up to create an overarching story: the process of washing away the dirt and darkness that collects over the course of a life. It is a story of healing, and it has a happy ending.
The Washing Room: A Story of Stories, is creative nonfiction memoir about inter-generational trauma. My Ngoc weaves together a series of short stories loosely centered on her own narrative: growing up in a refugee community and then stepping into an Ivy League college, and all the painful moments resultant from that transition. She takes the reader through a range of experiences, from working as a nail technician to being a student at Harvard.
Sometimes deeply disgusting, sometimes wonderfully detached, and always tinged with poignancy, the vignettes add up to create an overarching story: the process of washing away the dirt and darkness that collects over the course of a life. It is a story of healing, and it has a happy ending.
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First published April 1, 2013
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October 2, 2013
From describing the immigrant experience/American dream to evoking clear cut surgical details, this book draws in the reader in an undeniably magnetic manner. In a short essay format, The Washing Room details the experiences of the author's upbringing and college experiences in Georgia and Harvard. The anecdotes cover settings as varied as a nail salon, a doctor's office, and a psychiatric ward. I would especially recommend this book to fans of memoirs and colorful but straightforward writing.
January 13, 2025
My favorite quotes:
“for the word “depression” does not even exist in the Vietnamese language. My battle with death had its origins long before my breakdown, long before its first whispers shook the walls of my fetal home and tempted me to wither into darkness.” (p.15)
“My parents were living on their continent of immigrant life in America while my ground split apart from theirs—without realizing it, I was soon standing on my own island of American dreams. The rift between us made me more incapable of seeing their love over the years, and death grew more confident in its advances.” (p.19)
“I know I’m dirty and all I want is to be clean. I want so badly to tell her everything, but I can’t. I don’t know how to say “shower.” (p.20)
“the bacteria under his nails had long ago killed the nerves in the skin, so the cuts and wounds and festers on his toes are completely unknown to him. I am glad that he does not notice my shivers… I want to give this man a good pedicure, but the more I touch him the more I want to run away from him.” (p.28-29)
“They cannot go past the pain that had formed a shell around her. We’re in the same room but living in our own universes, haunted by our separate pains.” (p.36)
“My parents often tell me that every person we meet comes into our lives for a reason. Because of the way karma and reincarnation work, we either have some connection in the past life or we are meant to make a connection in this life. Perhaps I owed Na something in my past life.” (p.37)
“I imagined her body being cut up into pieces by my mom’s words and reassembled into a different person by some cold doctor, and I saw that my sister had already chosen to go down this path, and I cried.” (p.44)
“A healthy relationship takes the form of two stars colliding and fusing their orbits together, forming a binary system, in which they dance around a shared gravity.” (p.51)
“It is through touch that the body becomes alive.” (p.53)
“Harvard has too many opportunities, too many stars, and I feel like a clump of floating dust in this strange, stellar universe.” (p.60)
“Whenever I talk to people, I am letting them enter me momentarily. If I do not take time to realign myself, I will be cut to pieces. This needs to be time set aside every day to heal.” (p.69)
“And then it hits me: I am in the loony bin… The shame of loneliness follows me through the hallway, and I feel like I am wearing a badge that marks me “lost” for all others to see.” (p.87-88)
“We all understand too well the language of pain, and while they wear theirs on their sleeves, I bury mine inside… none of us know how to channel our pain, and it ends up welling inside of us until it transforms into something else, something with a heavier form and more evil intentions. That something had nearly killed me, and today, it snapped a toe in half. (p.91)
“‘I don’t care. I think all those kids who are depressed are just spoiled.’” (p.109)
“I realize that I have just succeeded in documenting the slow death of a man by watching his blood become berserk on paper.” (p.116)
“The reality of life after college seems so decrepit and monotonous, and I am lonelier than ever, more separated than my friends who are in college. While the care and attention of my parents used to touch me, their remaining concern only fills me with the conviction that there is indeed something still horribly wrong with me, something that will never go away. “I’m tired of all this,” I say. “Ever since my breakdown, everything has been about this goddamn depression and getting better and re-accessing my entire life and trying to explain everything to everyone.” (p.121)
“Sometimes you have to destroy everything to build something better. Now that we both know what it feels like to be frail and healing, we are finding some common ground with each other again, and it feels good.” (p.131)
“We hear things that are just like a memory, a reminder of something. And then, finally, this body becomes very uncomfortable too, and we have to die.” (p.138)
“It amazes at how one year ago I could even think of ending my life; the cold loneliness I felt then now seems so distant, as if it lies on the other side of a veil to another world. Here, surrounded by lights and song and the kisses of a million tiny snowflakes, I close my eyes and smile in silent gratitude for my beating heart.” (p.139)
“Places touched by human hands never fail to turn black with time.” (p.144)
“to anyone and everyone who has sunk into darkness, and I hope they are on their way to a warmer, brighter place.” (p.150)
“for the word “depression” does not even exist in the Vietnamese language. My battle with death had its origins long before my breakdown, long before its first whispers shook the walls of my fetal home and tempted me to wither into darkness.” (p.15)
“My parents were living on their continent of immigrant life in America while my ground split apart from theirs—without realizing it, I was soon standing on my own island of American dreams. The rift between us made me more incapable of seeing their love over the years, and death grew more confident in its advances.” (p.19)
“I know I’m dirty and all I want is to be clean. I want so badly to tell her everything, but I can’t. I don’t know how to say “shower.” (p.20)
“the bacteria under his nails had long ago killed the nerves in the skin, so the cuts and wounds and festers on his toes are completely unknown to him. I am glad that he does not notice my shivers… I want to give this man a good pedicure, but the more I touch him the more I want to run away from him.” (p.28-29)
“They cannot go past the pain that had formed a shell around her. We’re in the same room but living in our own universes, haunted by our separate pains.” (p.36)
“My parents often tell me that every person we meet comes into our lives for a reason. Because of the way karma and reincarnation work, we either have some connection in the past life or we are meant to make a connection in this life. Perhaps I owed Na something in my past life.” (p.37)
“I imagined her body being cut up into pieces by my mom’s words and reassembled into a different person by some cold doctor, and I saw that my sister had already chosen to go down this path, and I cried.” (p.44)
“A healthy relationship takes the form of two stars colliding and fusing their orbits together, forming a binary system, in which they dance around a shared gravity.” (p.51)
“It is through touch that the body becomes alive.” (p.53)
“Harvard has too many opportunities, too many stars, and I feel like a clump of floating dust in this strange, stellar universe.” (p.60)
“Whenever I talk to people, I am letting them enter me momentarily. If I do not take time to realign myself, I will be cut to pieces. This needs to be time set aside every day to heal.” (p.69)
“And then it hits me: I am in the loony bin… The shame of loneliness follows me through the hallway, and I feel like I am wearing a badge that marks me “lost” for all others to see.” (p.87-88)
“We all understand too well the language of pain, and while they wear theirs on their sleeves, I bury mine inside… none of us know how to channel our pain, and it ends up welling inside of us until it transforms into something else, something with a heavier form and more evil intentions. That something had nearly killed me, and today, it snapped a toe in half. (p.91)
“‘I don’t care. I think all those kids who are depressed are just spoiled.’” (p.109)
“I realize that I have just succeeded in documenting the slow death of a man by watching his blood become berserk on paper.” (p.116)
“The reality of life after college seems so decrepit and monotonous, and I am lonelier than ever, more separated than my friends who are in college. While the care and attention of my parents used to touch me, their remaining concern only fills me with the conviction that there is indeed something still horribly wrong with me, something that will never go away. “I’m tired of all this,” I say. “Ever since my breakdown, everything has been about this goddamn depression and getting better and re-accessing my entire life and trying to explain everything to everyone.” (p.121)
“Sometimes you have to destroy everything to build something better. Now that we both know what it feels like to be frail and healing, we are finding some common ground with each other again, and it feels good.” (p.131)
“We hear things that are just like a memory, a reminder of something. And then, finally, this body becomes very uncomfortable too, and we have to die.” (p.138)
“It amazes at how one year ago I could even think of ending my life; the cold loneliness I felt then now seems so distant, as if it lies on the other side of a veil to another world. Here, surrounded by lights and song and the kisses of a million tiny snowflakes, I close my eyes and smile in silent gratitude for my beating heart.” (p.139)
“Places touched by human hands never fail to turn black with time.” (p.144)
“to anyone and everyone who has sunk into darkness, and I hope they are on their way to a warmer, brighter place.” (p.150)
September 1, 2014
I’ve always wondered what kind of lifestyle it takes for someone to grow fungus on their body.”
Over the past three weeks, I have had a number of people, many of whom are gifted writers, read this sentence. Every single one wanted to read more. Why? Before answering this question let me provide a bit of context. The sentence opens up the chapter of a book entitled The Washing Room. The book’s title is also the title of this particular chapter. You can read a version of the whole chapter on the website of Harvard’s literary magazine The Advocate.
The sentence invites us in to a world. The world, even one we interpret from a single sentence, is unlike the one we know. “Invites” might not be the right word; “shock” isn’t quite right either as that would be too strong, but maybe “shivers “will do. If it seems as though I am being too nitpicky about the right word, I am trying to be precise because the words in this book are often terribly precise and I want to try, given my own linguistic limitations, to attempt to get this across.
Many of the sentences in this book have a scientific precision, while others have a poetic attention to sound and image. Some have both. The same description of the sentences might well be applied to the writer, My Ngoc To. “We are our stories” is the line I used to help summarize the end of my interview and comments with My Ngoc, posted a fewdays ago about her experience at Harvard. The line applies well to her memoir too:
I’ve always wondered what kind of lifestyle it takes for someone to grow fungus on their body. I used to think that these people were the exception, but I have touched too many feet with clumps of dirt scrunched up under the nails to continue believing that the majority of the population keeps itself clean.
I especially loved thick, yellow toenails hiding years of bacteria between layers of keratin. Heels covered in calluses. Toe hair. Sores. A fine layer of dead, crusted skin running from the heels all the way up to the knees.
This is the world of a nail technician: flakes of dead skin and cuticles, bits of nails and hair, dirt squished into balls nudged into the corners of spa chairs. Anything that could get filthy got filthy, and three years of subjugation to this law taught me to wash my hands.
If My Ngoc’s interview shared some surprising details about her less than perfect experience at Harvard, The Washing Room lets us get dirty. Her words fascinate. For most who have ever entered a nail salon, the sound of Vietnamese, the smell of nail polish, and feel of hands or clippers or emery boards are what stays with us. My Ngoc reverses the perspective and in such ways that we will never again feel the same way. That is what great writing does. It changes perspectives.
John Casey, national book award winner, in his insightful just released book, Beyond the First Draft: The Art of Fiction, shares some of his thoughts about the rules of writing with by enlisting the help of other writers (as I am doing too):
Conrad’s’ “Above all, I want to make you see” is a wonderful motto. Fiction often fails because it isn’t visible enough. I see my own early bad writing repeated year after year by otherwise gifted young writers because they want to get right to the metaphysics. But when they or I get to what things look like— not just picturesque landscapes but people’s expressions, light on water, the way a worker works— things perk up.
My Ngoc’s prose makes us see and things do indeed “perk up.” By perk up, I mean that our neurons start firing at a higher level as we absorb the gritty details. I am not sure we perk up in the sense of feeling happy except from an aesthetic sense.
Through her memoir, My Ngoc does not make the mistake that many young writers do-she rarely goes in for metaphysics. Some of the most compelling passages, such as the ones here, have either a touch of irony or clinical detachment. Her study of biology permits her to describe the detailed formation of a human heart in ways that make the miracle of the heart at birth comes across as more than a metaphor for how we feel. We see the heart and we see the feet and we see the many places My Ngoc must travel to. By travel I don’t mean exotic places .(Although one of my few critiques of the book as it currently stands is that it does not take us on her journey to South America, something she mentions but does not describe. It’s always a good sign when a reader wants a book longer—see Samuel Johnson’s phrase about Paradise Lost).
It also seems fitting that Casey invokes Conrad’s rule, since Conrad’s first language was not English and My Ngoc was a young immigrant to the US growing up in a household in which Vietnamese was the common tongue. It does happen, rarely (think of Nabokov too), that writers come into their own in a second language. For these chosen few they pay attention to words in ways those of us who have been immersed in our native tongue sometimes overlook.
Thus far I have not tried to describe the plot, or narrative arc of The Washing Room. In part this is due to my belief that what makes great writing great is not the plot (the Russian Formalist say there are only 9 of them anyway) but the exposition, the pace and the details that we see (and hear and touch and smell and taste). We live within the sentences that sing and many of the sentences in this book do.
The plot follows what the Germans called a bildungsroman, a novel of maturation. My Ngoc begins her memoir in childhood and follows her life through her time in Georgia, living, at first, hand to mouth, and then slowly rising into some economic security. But the nail salon her parents run requires My Ngoc and her sisters to work many hours and to take on all the most challenging clients who walk in through the door. My Ngoc must do the work that other employees not a part of the family would find, as we certainly would, overwhelming. Rather than rebel, My Ngoc does her job well, but uses the Washing Room as her sanctuary. The relationships among family members receive sharp focus throughout the book. The characters, as it were, are not flat but rounded. They have their strengths and weaknesses, but my vague description should simply be a road sign to find out more about my Ngoc and her family. Those who read for the plot will see that her life did not come from privilege but it did prepare her for success, and then it didn’t, and then it did again.
Once she leaves for Harvard, all seems well for a while, until it isn’t. The books chapters on her depression, hospitalization and recovery are, at times, hard to read. She takes great care to write sympathetically about those she is with in the mental hospitals, the young men and women who seem lost, far more perhaps than she. My Ngoc does not attempt to analyze herself and her depression with too many terms and jargon-ride labels. Instead she describes the people, the rooms, and the movement across time.
By the end of the memoir, both the physical and mental journeys that My Ngoc undergoes returns her to what appears to be a safe harbor. In addition she includes her artwork that “speaks” to us too. My Ngoc may be headed in the footsteps of a faculty member at Harvard she has interviewed. Has written and taught about her own battles with depression and how to come out of it in ways that will help others and herself too.
“There is only one recipe—to care a great deal for the cookery.” Henry James
James Wood uses this quote as the epigraph to his wonderful book How Fiction Works. Cookery in writing means the nouns and the verbs, the sounds and rhythms. While there may be a few recipes that work for writing, the cookery is what makes it something that is a feast for the senses, somethng that sticks to the ribs and to the synapses.
If it seems odd that I am using quotes about fiction to write about The Washing Room, I think the lines between fiction and what is now called creative non-fiction have blurred over the past generation. Creative non-fiction is the fastest growing part of creative writing programs and it is also something sees far more often on social media too. The techniques of making us see and using good cookery apply just as well to creative non-fiction too. My Ngoc’s book is a testament to this. The cliché about truth being stranger than fiction has some merit but I do know that non-fiction can be more evocative than lots of fiction. Woods, in his own voice this time, describes the aims of his book this way: “If the book has a larger argument it is that fiction is both artifice and verisimilitude, and that there is nothing difficult in holding together these possibilities”. Once again I would say this sentence applies well to The Washing Room. The artifice does not consist of made up details (James Frey did a good job of that), but in the details that let us see in an accurate way the life she has led unfold. For anyone looking to read words that will inspire with what I would call, (stealing Yeats here), terrible beauty, The Washing Room will.
Over the past three weeks, I have had a number of people, many of whom are gifted writers, read this sentence. Every single one wanted to read more. Why? Before answering this question let me provide a bit of context. The sentence opens up the chapter of a book entitled The Washing Room. The book’s title is also the title of this particular chapter. You can read a version of the whole chapter on the website of Harvard’s literary magazine The Advocate.
The sentence invites us in to a world. The world, even one we interpret from a single sentence, is unlike the one we know. “Invites” might not be the right word; “shock” isn’t quite right either as that would be too strong, but maybe “shivers “will do. If it seems as though I am being too nitpicky about the right word, I am trying to be precise because the words in this book are often terribly precise and I want to try, given my own linguistic limitations, to attempt to get this across.
Many of the sentences in this book have a scientific precision, while others have a poetic attention to sound and image. Some have both. The same description of the sentences might well be applied to the writer, My Ngoc To. “We are our stories” is the line I used to help summarize the end of my interview and comments with My Ngoc, posted a fewdays ago about her experience at Harvard. The line applies well to her memoir too:
I’ve always wondered what kind of lifestyle it takes for someone to grow fungus on their body. I used to think that these people were the exception, but I have touched too many feet with clumps of dirt scrunched up under the nails to continue believing that the majority of the population keeps itself clean.
I especially loved thick, yellow toenails hiding years of bacteria between layers of keratin. Heels covered in calluses. Toe hair. Sores. A fine layer of dead, crusted skin running from the heels all the way up to the knees.
This is the world of a nail technician: flakes of dead skin and cuticles, bits of nails and hair, dirt squished into balls nudged into the corners of spa chairs. Anything that could get filthy got filthy, and three years of subjugation to this law taught me to wash my hands.
If My Ngoc’s interview shared some surprising details about her less than perfect experience at Harvard, The Washing Room lets us get dirty. Her words fascinate. For most who have ever entered a nail salon, the sound of Vietnamese, the smell of nail polish, and feel of hands or clippers or emery boards are what stays with us. My Ngoc reverses the perspective and in such ways that we will never again feel the same way. That is what great writing does. It changes perspectives.
John Casey, national book award winner, in his insightful just released book, Beyond the First Draft: The Art of Fiction, shares some of his thoughts about the rules of writing with by enlisting the help of other writers (as I am doing too):
Conrad’s’ “Above all, I want to make you see” is a wonderful motto. Fiction often fails because it isn’t visible enough. I see my own early bad writing repeated year after year by otherwise gifted young writers because they want to get right to the metaphysics. But when they or I get to what things look like— not just picturesque landscapes but people’s expressions, light on water, the way a worker works— things perk up.
My Ngoc’s prose makes us see and things do indeed “perk up.” By perk up, I mean that our neurons start firing at a higher level as we absorb the gritty details. I am not sure we perk up in the sense of feeling happy except from an aesthetic sense.
Through her memoir, My Ngoc does not make the mistake that many young writers do-she rarely goes in for metaphysics. Some of the most compelling passages, such as the ones here, have either a touch of irony or clinical detachment. Her study of biology permits her to describe the detailed formation of a human heart in ways that make the miracle of the heart at birth comes across as more than a metaphor for how we feel. We see the heart and we see the feet and we see the many places My Ngoc must travel to. By travel I don’t mean exotic places .(Although one of my few critiques of the book as it currently stands is that it does not take us on her journey to South America, something she mentions but does not describe. It’s always a good sign when a reader wants a book longer—see Samuel Johnson’s phrase about Paradise Lost).
It also seems fitting that Casey invokes Conrad’s rule, since Conrad’s first language was not English and My Ngoc was a young immigrant to the US growing up in a household in which Vietnamese was the common tongue. It does happen, rarely (think of Nabokov too), that writers come into their own in a second language. For these chosen few they pay attention to words in ways those of us who have been immersed in our native tongue sometimes overlook.
Thus far I have not tried to describe the plot, or narrative arc of The Washing Room. In part this is due to my belief that what makes great writing great is not the plot (the Russian Formalist say there are only 9 of them anyway) but the exposition, the pace and the details that we see (and hear and touch and smell and taste). We live within the sentences that sing and many of the sentences in this book do.
The plot follows what the Germans called a bildungsroman, a novel of maturation. My Ngoc begins her memoir in childhood and follows her life through her time in Georgia, living, at first, hand to mouth, and then slowly rising into some economic security. But the nail salon her parents run requires My Ngoc and her sisters to work many hours and to take on all the most challenging clients who walk in through the door. My Ngoc must do the work that other employees not a part of the family would find, as we certainly would, overwhelming. Rather than rebel, My Ngoc does her job well, but uses the Washing Room as her sanctuary. The relationships among family members receive sharp focus throughout the book. The characters, as it were, are not flat but rounded. They have their strengths and weaknesses, but my vague description should simply be a road sign to find out more about my Ngoc and her family. Those who read for the plot will see that her life did not come from privilege but it did prepare her for success, and then it didn’t, and then it did again.
Once she leaves for Harvard, all seems well for a while, until it isn’t. The books chapters on her depression, hospitalization and recovery are, at times, hard to read. She takes great care to write sympathetically about those she is with in the mental hospitals, the young men and women who seem lost, far more perhaps than she. My Ngoc does not attempt to analyze herself and her depression with too many terms and jargon-ride labels. Instead she describes the people, the rooms, and the movement across time.
By the end of the memoir, both the physical and mental journeys that My Ngoc undergoes returns her to what appears to be a safe harbor. In addition she includes her artwork that “speaks” to us too. My Ngoc may be headed in the footsteps of a faculty member at Harvard she has interviewed. Has written and taught about her own battles with depression and how to come out of it in ways that will help others and herself too.
“There is only one recipe—to care a great deal for the cookery.” Henry James
James Wood uses this quote as the epigraph to his wonderful book How Fiction Works. Cookery in writing means the nouns and the verbs, the sounds and rhythms. While there may be a few recipes that work for writing, the cookery is what makes it something that is a feast for the senses, somethng that sticks to the ribs and to the synapses.
If it seems odd that I am using quotes about fiction to write about The Washing Room, I think the lines between fiction and what is now called creative non-fiction have blurred over the past generation. Creative non-fiction is the fastest growing part of creative writing programs and it is also something sees far more often on social media too. The techniques of making us see and using good cookery apply just as well to creative non-fiction too. My Ngoc’s book is a testament to this. The cliché about truth being stranger than fiction has some merit but I do know that non-fiction can be more evocative than lots of fiction. Woods, in his own voice this time, describes the aims of his book this way: “If the book has a larger argument it is that fiction is both artifice and verisimilitude, and that there is nothing difficult in holding together these possibilities”. Once again I would say this sentence applies well to The Washing Room. The artifice does not consist of made up details (James Frey did a good job of that), but in the details that let us see in an accurate way the life she has led unfold. For anyone looking to read words that will inspire with what I would call, (stealing Yeats here), terrible beauty, The Washing Room will.
October 6, 2013
To gives a voice to those silenced . Giving the reader the sight to see into the life not only of herself but countless others . Both of immigration and transitions throughout life. Each story is both the master and the student. The reader does not only see To's growth, healing process, and strength-To touches the reader's own heart.Causing the reader to look within the washing room within themselves.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews