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Owner of a Lonely Heart: A Memoir
From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fragmented by war and resettlement.
At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her father, sister, grandmother, and uncles fled Saigon for America. Beth’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together.
Owner of a Lonely Heart is a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, sometimes with her mother alone and sometimes with her sister—Beth tells a coming-of-age story that spans her own Midwestern childhood, her first meeting with her mother, and becoming a parent herself. Vivid and illuminating, Owner of a Lonely Heart is a deeply personal story of family, connection, and belonging: as a daughter, a mother, and as a Vietnamese refugee in America.
At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her father, sister, grandmother, and uncles fled Saigon for America. Beth’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together.
Owner of a Lonely Heart is a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, sometimes with her mother alone and sometimes with her sister—Beth tells a coming-of-age story that spans her own Midwestern childhood, her first meeting with her mother, and becoming a parent herself. Vivid and illuminating, Owner of a Lonely Heart is a deeply personal story of family, connection, and belonging: as a daughter, a mother, and as a Vietnamese refugee in America.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published July 4, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 293 reviews
March 22, 2024
Poignant, raw, and illuminating. Beth Nguyen narrates her memoir, Owner of a Lonely Heart: A Memoir. I love it when an author narrates their work on audiobook.
Nguyen was eight months old when her father, uncle, grandmother, and sister fled Vietnam and ended up in America. Nguyen's mother remained in Vietnam with two of Nguyen's siblings. Her mother later came to America, but Nguyen didn't meet her until she was in college.
Nguyen describes her experiences as a refugee trying to navigate life when she looks and feels different than others. She shares the painful evolution of whether to keep her birth name or change it to an American name. Her boyfriend's family invited her to attend Miss Saigon. Her horror and trauma over how Vietnamese were portrayed in the play haunted her for years. She couldn't find the words to adequately explain the pain from watching Miss Saigon.
A powerful personal journey about what life as a refugee in America feels like.
Nguyen was eight months old when her father, uncle, grandmother, and sister fled Vietnam and ended up in America. Nguyen's mother remained in Vietnam with two of Nguyen's siblings. Her mother later came to America, but Nguyen didn't meet her until she was in college.
Nguyen describes her experiences as a refugee trying to navigate life when she looks and feels different than others. She shares the painful evolution of whether to keep her birth name or change it to an American name. Her boyfriend's family invited her to attend Miss Saigon. Her horror and trauma over how Vietnamese were portrayed in the play haunted her for years. She couldn't find the words to adequately explain the pain from watching Miss Saigon.
A powerful personal journey about what life as a refugee in America feels like.
June 28, 2023
3.5 stars, or 4 stars and a caveat, depending on how you want to look at it.
Over the course of my life I have spent less than twenty-four hours with my mother, writes Nguyen. Here is how those hours came to be, and what happened in them (loc. 51*).
Nguyen's upbringing was not motherless—she and her sister had their stepmother, the woman they called Mom. Nor was her childhood terribly different from the lives of her classmates. But her knowledge, growing up, that her experience was outside the norm (refugee, first mother somewhere else, name unfamiliar to most American ears), shaped the way she approached her life, first in youth and then as an adult.
I was ten years old when I learned that my mother had come to the United States as a refugee, too. I was nineteen when I finally met her. (loc. 66)
Part of Owner of a Lonely Heart is, of course, about those few hours with her mother: an hour here, a few hours there, a minute or two squeezed in here. Nguyen circles in on these hours, revisits them, examines them from new angles. (I recommend getting comfortable with some repetition before reading the book, because the story does loop in on itself at times.) She's on a quest for memories, for pieces of her mother's life and of her own—sometimes what was, and sometimes what could have been.
That caveat: I'm intrigued by the questions Nguyen doesn't ask in the book. She openly makes the choice to omit some things from the writing of the book (as a reader I'm disappointed, but as someone who believes staunchly in the right of the memoirist to keep some things private, I applaud the choice), and I wonder whether there are other things she opted out of sharing. She asks her mother Big Questions, but I wonder also about the smaller ones. I guess I'm left with questions about the unasked questions, and about more possible interpretations of her mother's non-answers.
One thing that does very much intrigue me is Nguyen's discussion of her name. She has previously published under her Vietnamese name, Bich Minh Nguyen, and this is her first book under the name Beth Nguyen. I won't get too much into her decision to make the shift (it's not a long section, but it's worth reading in full), but there's some very interesting commentary on who is most likely to criticise the choice (white people with names that are rarely mispronounced in the US) versus who is less likely to criticise. But here is the thing: I am not Beth to make life easier for everyone else; I am Beth to make life easier for me (loc. 1826).
I'm curious now about Nguyen's earlier memoir, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, and what parts of the picture that might fill in.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.
Over the course of my life I have spent less than twenty-four hours with my mother, writes Nguyen. Here is how those hours came to be, and what happened in them (loc. 51*).
Nguyen's upbringing was not motherless—she and her sister had their stepmother, the woman they called Mom. Nor was her childhood terribly different from the lives of her classmates. But her knowledge, growing up, that her experience was outside the norm (refugee, first mother somewhere else, name unfamiliar to most American ears), shaped the way she approached her life, first in youth and then as an adult.
I was ten years old when I learned that my mother had come to the United States as a refugee, too. I was nineteen when I finally met her. (loc. 66)
Part of Owner of a Lonely Heart is, of course, about those few hours with her mother: an hour here, a few hours there, a minute or two squeezed in here. Nguyen circles in on these hours, revisits them, examines them from new angles. (I recommend getting comfortable with some repetition before reading the book, because the story does loop in on itself at times.) She's on a quest for memories, for pieces of her mother's life and of her own—sometimes what was, and sometimes what could have been.
That caveat: I'm intrigued by the questions Nguyen doesn't ask in the book. She openly makes the choice to omit some things from the writing of the book (as a reader I'm disappointed, but as someone who believes staunchly in the right of the memoirist to keep some things private, I applaud the choice), and I wonder whether there are other things she opted out of sharing. She asks her mother Big Questions, but I wonder also about the smaller ones. I guess I'm left with questions about the unasked questions, and about more possible interpretations of her mother's non-answers.
One thing that does very much intrigue me is Nguyen's discussion of her name. She has previously published under her Vietnamese name, Bich Minh Nguyen, and this is her first book under the name Beth Nguyen. I won't get too much into her decision to make the shift (it's not a long section, but it's worth reading in full), but there's some very interesting commentary on who is most likely to criticise the choice (white people with names that are rarely mispronounced in the US) versus who is less likely to criticise. But here is the thing: I am not Beth to make life easier for everyone else; I am Beth to make life easier for me (loc. 1826).
I'm curious now about Nguyen's earlier memoir, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, and what parts of the picture that might fill in.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.
September 11, 2023
This book really didn't leave an impression on me. The memoir is fine and a interesting story but felt much more like an essay than a full length book.
2023
October 15, 2025ANHPI TBR
Memoir March TBR
Non-fiction November TBR
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner
Memoir March TBR
Non-fiction November TBR
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner
April 27, 2023
So much of the book and Nguyen's life is about hiding, shrinking away from truths she could know about her family and truths about herself. Her father took her, her sister and her grandmother and sought refuge in the US during the Vietnam war, a sudden decision that separated them from their mother. Nguyen knows so little about her mother, so little about what happened, and every time she asks about the past, she's met with a wall of un-answers, "that was so long ago," "I don't remember."
And somehow, Nguyen has similarly learned to adopt a forgetting sense, falling further into a removed silence. The first time she meets her mother for the first time in 20 years she can't remember exact details. She's blocked things out, things that should be momentous - maybe her brain is subconsciously making an effort to protect her. But consciously, Nguyen also avoided fostering a relationship with her birth mother, shrinking away from her and chances to meet. This feels so sad to witness because she has been at least partly the reason for her own blinded, lonely heart.
Nguyen shows us how to some degree this forgetting/hiding is innately what's required in assimilation. To some degree, you hide in plain sight in order to adapt and through those efforts you learn to distort your own memories.
I appreciate that this felt very honest and real
(4.5)
And somehow, Nguyen has similarly learned to adopt a forgetting sense, falling further into a removed silence. The first time she meets her mother for the first time in 20 years she can't remember exact details. She's blocked things out, things that should be momentous - maybe her brain is subconsciously making an effort to protect her. But consciously, Nguyen also avoided fostering a relationship with her birth mother, shrinking away from her and chances to meet. This feels so sad to witness because she has been at least partly the reason for her own blinded, lonely heart.
Nguyen shows us how to some degree this forgetting/hiding is innately what's required in assimilation. To some degree, you hide in plain sight in order to adapt and through those efforts you learn to distort your own memories.
I appreciate that this felt very honest and real
(4.5)
October 31, 2023
A memoir about belonging, family and overcoming. Although, there were moments of great insight and discovery, I found the whole memoir rather disjointed and often making parallels from one thought to the next was rather difficult.
Thank Simon and Schuster for this complimentary review copy.
Thank Simon and Schuster for this complimentary review copy.
July 10, 2023
I have read and enjoyed all of the books Beth Nguyen has written but especially love her two memoirs. Owner of a Lonely Heart did not disappoint after loving Stealing Buddha’s Dinner so much. She mixes wonderful and poignant insights into the struggles of growing up as a refugee in Michigan with fun nostalgia of growing up during the late 70’s through the 80’s and 90’s. I was so sad when this book ended.
October 19, 2023
This is a memoir of a girl whose father flees Vietnam with her and her sister, in their infancy, moving to America. The mother stays behind and emigrates later. Meanwhile, the father divorces her and marries another, who becomes a capable and loving stepmother. When the mother finally comes to the States, one would expect her to establish a relationship with her daughters but that never happens. There is no animosity, rather a lack of feelings and motivation. It sort of reminds me of adopted people who find their birth parents when they become adults. Expectations are generally not met by either side.
July 19, 2023
Also enjoy reading about someone else life to see how different it is from mine. This was a good one. Wish there was more to it though. Felt like a lot of the story was on repeat, talking about the same things.
February 1, 2024
Similar but not nearly as emotion-provoking as Crying in Hmart. It reads like an essay and with concepts like identifying as a mother and refugee, I’d expect more emotion. I hate rating memoirs bc who am I to judge someone else’s experience, especially one so unlike my own so take it with a grain of salt.
August 8, 2024
3.5 stars rounded up again! i feel strange rating a memoir— i enjoyed this & felt very melancholy and sad for majority of the book. beth writes so beautifully & i simultaneously love how succinct her prose is. being a mother and having a mother can be so different
July 9, 2023
"Every refugee has to bear the story of leaving."
"Silence can look like submission, but for many of us it can be a form of self-preservation."
Nguyen, an eight-month-old baby, and her family fled Saigon for America the day before its fall. However, her mother was left behind and only after nineteen years she was reunited with her mother.
In this memoir, Nguyen lost a mother, a country and a language. With evocative writing, Nguyen vulnerably shares how being separated from her mother gave her a different concept of parenting. As her father changed over years, the author exposes her complex relationship with her father. The narrative also goes back to her family's history (in Vietnam) - of being refugee twice and the way her life was shaped by generational trauma, even if she had no actual memories of war and leaving. There's a direct line between her own childhood, refugee identity and relationship with her mother in Boston to her anxieties. Even unconsciously knowing, it's still painful to read that one needs/chooses to forget in order to assimilate.
On a 'happier' note, the pages are infused with Vietnamese culture, one of the favorite things that I enjoy to read.
OWNER OF A LONELY HEART is about connection, refugee experience, belonging, absence, mother-daughter relationship and race. Utterly honest, I appreciated reading this memoir.
[ I received a complimentary copy from the publisher - Scribner Books . All opinions are my own ]
"Silence can look like submission, but for many of us it can be a form of self-preservation."
Nguyen, an eight-month-old baby, and her family fled Saigon for America the day before its fall. However, her mother was left behind and only after nineteen years she was reunited with her mother.
In this memoir, Nguyen lost a mother, a country and a language. With evocative writing, Nguyen vulnerably shares how being separated from her mother gave her a different concept of parenting. As her father changed over years, the author exposes her complex relationship with her father. The narrative also goes back to her family's history (in Vietnam) - of being refugee twice and the way her life was shaped by generational trauma, even if she had no actual memories of war and leaving. There's a direct line between her own childhood, refugee identity and relationship with her mother in Boston to her anxieties. Even unconsciously knowing, it's still painful to read that one needs/chooses to forget in order to assimilate.
On a 'happier' note, the pages are infused with Vietnamese culture, one of the favorite things that I enjoy to read.
OWNER OF A LONELY HEART is about connection, refugee experience, belonging, absence, mother-daughter relationship and race. Utterly honest, I appreciated reading this memoir.
[ I received a complimentary copy from the publisher - Scribner Books . All opinions are my own ]
August 18, 2023
This was a semi-transcendent reading experience for me. I would absolutely recommend this for anyone. The prose is unaffected and accessible, yet also incisive and uniquely insightful. I felt Nguyen’s memories to be evoked in vivid color, perhaps because the paraphernalia of her childhood resembled my own.
While my life experiences are entirely distinct from Nguyen’s in the specifics, I found her memories eminently relatable and observed parallels in my own life. Her struggles with family relationships and taboo topics—with both cultural and personal roots—as well as identity, otherness, and growing up resonated with me in a deep way that I did not expect.
I found her stream-of-consciousness style and even, admittedly, sometimes haphazard structure to feel like I was having a conversation with Nguyen, or that I was reading a transcript of a story she was telling me, where occasionally she would break off into a tangent or forget a detail she wanted to go back to. Other reviewers found it confusing or disjointed, but it added an intimate and personal touch for me that deepened its sense of authenticity and honesty.
One particular moment of note: my most impactful takeaway from reading Owner of a Lonely Heart is that parents have the capacity to meet their children’s needs with grace and compassion—often without appreciation or acknowledgment—while simultaneously or alternately be utterly incapable of providing their children what they most desire. There is no perfect parent-child relationship, to be sure, but it is a uniquely human experience that the caregivers we are entirely dependent on as children can also deeply disappoint us as we grow older. Nguyen’s moments of most beautiful growth are to be found in her realizations that, though in certain ways her parents did not help her in ways that she wanted and did need, in other circumstances her needs were lovingly met in ways she didn’t always recognize.
While my life experiences are entirely distinct from Nguyen’s in the specifics, I found her memories eminently relatable and observed parallels in my own life. Her struggles with family relationships and taboo topics—with both cultural and personal roots—as well as identity, otherness, and growing up resonated with me in a deep way that I did not expect.
I found her stream-of-consciousness style and even, admittedly, sometimes haphazard structure to feel like I was having a conversation with Nguyen, or that I was reading a transcript of a story she was telling me, where occasionally she would break off into a tangent or forget a detail she wanted to go back to. Other reviewers found it confusing or disjointed, but it added an intimate and personal touch for me that deepened its sense of authenticity and honesty.
One particular moment of note: my most impactful takeaway from reading Owner of a Lonely Heart is that parents have the capacity to meet their children’s needs with grace and compassion—often without appreciation or acknowledgment—while simultaneously or alternately be utterly incapable of providing their children what they most desire. There is no perfect parent-child relationship, to be sure, but it is a uniquely human experience that the caregivers we are entirely dependent on as children can also deeply disappoint us as we grow older. Nguyen’s moments of most beautiful growth are to be found in her realizations that, though in certain ways her parents did not help her in ways that she wanted and did need, in other circumstances her needs were lovingly met in ways she didn’t always recognize.
May 27, 2024
Owner of a Lonely Heart is a memoir of a Vietnamese refugee who was brought to America at eight months old, but her mother was left in Vietnam. She struggles to assimilate and find a way to be comfortable in a small midwestern town where she never feels that she fits in. Thanks to Scribner for a copy of this book won through a Goodreads giveaway.
Read
January 13, 2026Memoir of being Vietnamese refugee and her separation from her mother in the process. Although similar to many refugee stories, I was struck by her reflections on her given name and how that fit into the American culture. Also, the energy it took for her to learn American ways and code switch when talking to white people. And her very limited interactions with her mother over decades. The book jumped around, but had good reflections, especially on things like motherhood. She talked about all of the women who were mother figures in her life. 3.5.
September 4, 2023
Revealing, filled with heartache and yearning.
Read
January 31, 2024Listened to this memoir of a child of refugees of the Vietnam war. The most memorable stories included stories of identity crises after coming to America and getting to know her estranged biological mother and complicated mother daughter relationships Not my favorite, but always good to read more Asian American stories and to hear more perspectives.
July 23, 2024
screaming crying throwing up
November 24, 2023
i often find essay-based memoirs to be hit or miss but I thoroughly enjoyed Owner of a Lonely Heart. Really insightful and touching reflections on family, growing older, and the experience of living in the United States as a refugee and the corresponding struggle to understand one’s identity as American but also “other.” Well written and full of voice. Read it in one day.
Read
September 5, 2023In fairness to the author I am not going to rate this book as I did not finsih. I read to page 89 which is a good ways in and I won't finish. Here is why. A memoir is a nonfiction narrative in which the author shares their memories from a specific time period or reflects upon a string of themed occurrences throughout their life. Based on this definition and based on a librarian friend's recent phrasing saying a memoir is episodic, I will say that FOR MY TASTE, this author's memoir is not episodic enough for me. I get it. She is a refugee and she was separated from her Mother or her Mother got separate from the rest of the family fleeing Saigon. Tragic. She describes a few occasions visiting her Mother and watching movies with her Dad. I may just be at the part of the book where she is beginning to understand her Dad more than she did as a young child, but for me, the book's evolution is too slow. For me, more episodes and less pure descriptions of the author's feelings would have engaged me more. Take me through what gave you these feelings.
November 15, 2023
What does it mean to be Asian American?
What does it mean to be Vietnamese?
What does it mean to be a refugee?
Our minds are filled with so many questions – questions about who we are, what it means to be you, where we came from. These are questions we ask our parents and relatives to learn more about yourself and our identity. But when those answers are difficult to attain, how can we find inner comfort and acceptance?
Recently, I have found the ‘joys’ of reading from Asian American authors. I use the word ‘joys’ loosely, as I’m not sure if that’s word accurately describes my feelings/experience – more, I have discovered the hidden gems of reading from people with similar upbringings and experiences as me. Because surprise surprise, they have a lot of the same thoughts and questions about life, family, history, etc. as me.
So needless to say, I felt a connection to the author and enjoyed the contents of the book. (it wasn’t that interesting of writing, and felt like the author was writing more for herself/as an outlet to work out her feelings, more than for an audience which is why the writing/way of storytelling wasn’t top tier in my opinion and may not have kept me interested if I wasn’t Vietnamese myself)
“She was the calmest person I ever knew. I thought she was the perfect being in this ay. But as I grew up it occurred to me that maybe it was part of her life’s work.
She worked everyday to be the person she was. It wasn’t magic or some predecessor gift… it was work.”
“If we don’t know what we missed, did we miss anything at all?
Maybe we were simply elsewhere, in a reality that someone was missing out on too.”
-------------------------------
Birthday/Death date
Date of death more important than date of birth to Vietnamese
Birth certificates are interesting because they’re a way for a living person to prove that they were born
“It is not accomplishment of being born… but staying alive is”
“If your children lost you, would you live enough in their minds? What if they forget and thus lose you?”
I feel like I will never forget Dad, and as a result never be mentally freed from the loss. But at the same time, I do worry about losing/forgetting about certain parts. I am losing part of my identity and history, and without the constant reminder do we forget? How can we keep those memories, and keep Dad close?
-------------------------------
Refugee experience
“Eventually displacement becomes the home”
“Refugees of their own – now divided – country”
“The tension of belonging or not belonging.
Of being stared at and overlooked would come to define my entire childhood and adolescence”
“Almost every Vietnamese family had people missing. Lost. Left behind”
-------------------------------
Asian/Vietnamese families
“U have learned that I too have a relationship with violence and war…
It’s in me through proximity
Through absorption
Through inheritance”
“Not talking is the way we deal with things.
Better not to ask.
Better not know.”
-------------------------------
“Need to connect story to reality”
“I was always thinking of the ending to it”
“These images have become my memory now”
“When you’re not white but surrounded by people who are, you learn pretty fast how to read a room… gauging a white person’s comfort around me”
What does it mean to be Vietnamese?
What does it mean to be a refugee?
Our minds are filled with so many questions – questions about who we are, what it means to be you, where we came from. These are questions we ask our parents and relatives to learn more about yourself and our identity. But when those answers are difficult to attain, how can we find inner comfort and acceptance?
Recently, I have found the ‘joys’ of reading from Asian American authors. I use the word ‘joys’ loosely, as I’m not sure if that’s word accurately describes my feelings/experience – more, I have discovered the hidden gems of reading from people with similar upbringings and experiences as me. Because surprise surprise, they have a lot of the same thoughts and questions about life, family, history, etc. as me.
So needless to say, I felt a connection to the author and enjoyed the contents of the book. (it wasn’t that interesting of writing, and felt like the author was writing more for herself/as an outlet to work out her feelings, more than for an audience which is why the writing/way of storytelling wasn’t top tier in my opinion and may not have kept me interested if I wasn’t Vietnamese myself)
“She was the calmest person I ever knew. I thought she was the perfect being in this ay. But as I grew up it occurred to me that maybe it was part of her life’s work.
She worked everyday to be the person she was. It wasn’t magic or some predecessor gift… it was work.”
“If we don’t know what we missed, did we miss anything at all?
Maybe we were simply elsewhere, in a reality that someone was missing out on too.”
-------------------------------
Birthday/Death date
Date of death more important than date of birth to Vietnamese
Birth certificates are interesting because they’re a way for a living person to prove that they were born
“It is not accomplishment of being born… but staying alive is”
“If your children lost you, would you live enough in their minds? What if they forget and thus lose you?”
I feel like I will never forget Dad, and as a result never be mentally freed from the loss. But at the same time, I do worry about losing/forgetting about certain parts. I am losing part of my identity and history, and without the constant reminder do we forget? How can we keep those memories, and keep Dad close?
-------------------------------
Refugee experience
“Eventually displacement becomes the home”
“Refugees of their own – now divided – country”
“The tension of belonging or not belonging.
Of being stared at and overlooked would come to define my entire childhood and adolescence”
“Almost every Vietnamese family had people missing. Lost. Left behind”
-------------------------------
Asian/Vietnamese families
“U have learned that I too have a relationship with violence and war…
It’s in me through proximity
Through absorption
Through inheritance”
“Not talking is the way we deal with things.
Better not to ask.
Better not know.”
-------------------------------
“Need to connect story to reality”
“I was always thinking of the ending to it”
“These images have become my memory now”
“When you’re not white but surrounded by people who are, you learn pretty fast how to read a room… gauging a white person’s comfort around me”
December 20, 2023
There’s a good story here but it’s not in chronological order. If it was chronological order, it would be a 4 star book for me. The back and forth between timelines was exhausting to keep track of the story.
May 20, 2023
I thought again of how war separates families in strange and devastating ways, resulting in fractured relationships. Beth Nguyen was eight months old in April 1975 when she and her sister fled with their father and his relatives on a naval ship to the U.S. , leaving behind Beth's mother, who lived in another town. Years later, in 1985, the mother and her family arrived in Boston as immigrants.
Beth met her birth mother only after finishing her second year of college, but she had grown up with no curiousity about Vietnam, the past, or her birth mother. As Beth wrote," Our histories had separated long ago and had never truly met again."
However, Beth soon began to imagine and wonder about the grief her birth mother must have felt on finding her daughters gone when she went to visit them in the city back in Vietnam. Beth finally learns from what happened when her mother found an empty house, no note, and only news that their father had fled Vietnam with the girls those long years ago.
The novel becomes emotional for me, as the reader, towards the second half of the memoir, when Beth presses her birth mother for more honest answers about the past - how her mother felt and reacted to losing her daughters so suddenly. Though both her parents now have new families of their own, Beth seems haunted by what her mother must have felt and what she might feel still.
I felt that there was a breakthrough and that after her mother admitted she "cried and cried", Beth came to terms with the wholesome life she had had with her father and stepmother, and the new relationship she has with her birth mother and her family.
I feel I have not done justice to this very interesting and moving memoir of war and the aftermath of war on two families. This is a very worthwhile memoir for those interested in the Vietnam War, in refugees, and in the complex backgrounds and experiences of many immigrants.
Beth met her birth mother only after finishing her second year of college, but she had grown up with no curiousity about Vietnam, the past, or her birth mother. As Beth wrote," Our histories had separated long ago and had never truly met again."
However, Beth soon began to imagine and wonder about the grief her birth mother must have felt on finding her daughters gone when she went to visit them in the city back in Vietnam. Beth finally learns from what happened when her mother found an empty house, no note, and only news that their father had fled Vietnam with the girls those long years ago.
The novel becomes emotional for me, as the reader, towards the second half of the memoir, when Beth presses her birth mother for more honest answers about the past - how her mother felt and reacted to losing her daughters so suddenly. Though both her parents now have new families of their own, Beth seems haunted by what her mother must have felt and what she might feel still.
I felt that there was a breakthrough and that after her mother admitted she "cried and cried", Beth came to terms with the wholesome life she had had with her father and stepmother, and the new relationship she has with her birth mother and her family.
I feel I have not done justice to this very interesting and moving memoir of war and the aftermath of war on two families. This is a very worthwhile memoir for those interested in the Vietnam War, in refugees, and in the complex backgrounds and experiences of many immigrants.
December 7, 2023
I find it hard to "rate" someone's memoir. You're reading something incredibly vulnerable from the author - they're baring their soul to you in such a deep way, how can I possibly "rate" that? So 5/5 stars for that
For context, everything that I'm about to write is from a perspective of a white, millennial female with no children
The author mentions it in the Acknowledgements, but some of this book started as various essays before eventually being expanded upon into a memoir. Because of that, parts of the book felt disjointed and repetitive. It's possible that I read this too fast - perhaps if you read a chapter a day, versus the whole book over 2 days, it would create a natural break that makes the book flow more seamlessly.
While I teared up several times while reading, and recommended this book for my family book club, I'm curious if the book would have a bigger impact on mothers
Thank you to Goodreads and Simon & Schuster for my gifted ARC
For context, everything that I'm about to write is from a perspective of a white, millennial female with no children
The author mentions it in the Acknowledgements, but some of this book started as various essays before eventually being expanded upon into a memoir. Because of that, parts of the book felt disjointed and repetitive. It's possible that I read this too fast - perhaps if you read a chapter a day, versus the whole book over 2 days, it would create a natural break that makes the book flow more seamlessly.
While I teared up several times while reading, and recommended this book for my family book club, I'm curious if the book would have a bigger impact on mothers
Thank you to Goodreads and Simon & Schuster for my gifted ARC
September 3, 2023
I liked this book and I liked this woman. Her childhood was somewhat stable with her father and stepmother but her relationship with her mother was strange and strained. Ms. Nguyen writes really well, at times the book was a page-turner for me and I didn't want to put it down.
March 1, 2024
maybe i just wasn’t in the mood for a memoir but this was just.. not something i felt like even had much of a story. idk sorry i feel mean 😭
February 17, 2025
la verdad no logro comprender los reviews bajos de este libro. Nguyen narra su historia como inmigrante, madre, e hija de una madre ausente. se me hace una historia muy fuerte y eye opening, sobretodo para quienes nunca hemos sufrido ese nivel de xenofobia y aislamiento al ser inmigrantes en una cultura tan diferente como la nuestra. me encantan los memoirs porque no son solo ensayos sobre información, no son consejos, son las experiencias vividas por una persona real y en un mundo con gente con mente tan limitada, las memoirs nos obligan a ser conscientes de las vivencias (buenas o malas) de otras personas.
me gustó la escritura de Nguyen, aunque no sé si diría lo mismo si hubiese leído el libro, ya que escuché el audiolibro. sin embargo nunca me sentí aburrida o que hablaba de cosas que no me interesaban, yo la verdad me sentí muy curiosa en su historia y lo que tenía por contarnos.
me gustó la escritura de Nguyen, aunque no sé si diría lo mismo si hubiese leído el libro, ya que escuché el audiolibro. sin embargo nunca me sentí aburrida o que hablaba de cosas que no me interesaban, yo la verdad me sentí muy curiosa en su historia y lo que tenía por contarnos.
October 3, 2023
Interesting memoir from a Vietnamese woman who came to the US as an infant during the fall of Saigon. Her father took her and her sister and became refugees that ended up in Michigan. Her mother was left behind in Vietnam. Although she grew up with a stepmom and had her paternal grandmother with her, she never knew her mother. When she was 19 she finally met her birth mother who had also come over as a refugee and ended up in Boston. Now a mother with her own children, she talks about only being with her mom for less than 24 hours.
September 25, 2024
Great memoir. I personally loved how she really tied in her own personal stories and feelings toward motherhood and how it relates to her relationship with her mother and what it means to be a refugee. This was a pretty quick read. It you like memoirs, especially memoirs with some sort of historical context, you'll enjoy this one.
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