Susan Lieu had a distinct goal: "I wanted to publish this memoir when I was thirty-eight, the same age my mother was when she died from a tummy tuck." The Manicurist's Daughter debuts one month before Lieu's 39th birthday. Lieu originally made her family tragedy public in 2019 in a sold-out one-woman theatrical show, 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother. In the memoir, she alchemizes her live performances into print, fortifying it with all the background and backstories to produce a raw, mesmerizing look at paralyzing grief, immigrant identity, and familial dysfunction and redemption.
After five failed attempts to escape Vietnam, Lieu's parents and two older brothers landed in Malaysia in 1981. Lieu's older sister was born during their two years living in a refugee camp while awaiting asylum. "In 1982... the Liễu clan was assigned the most coveted country of all: the United States of America." The quintet arrived in California in 1983 as "boat people." They welcomed Susan, their only U.S.-born child, in 1985. Má founded two nail salons, earning enough to sponsor five relatives from Vietnam, whom she housed and employed. In 1996, Má went into surgery for a tummy tuck, nose work, and chin implant. She was deprived of oxygen for 14 minutes before the doctor called 911. She flatlined after a five-day coma. Má's death, Lieu would learn, "was the result of a negligent white man with a track record of preying on vulnerable Vietnamese refugees."
The extended family quickly imploded. Lieu's father banished her maternal grandmother and aunts. The businesses faltered. Lieu's relationship with her father devolved further. "Má's awful death made us refugees a second time.... We had to rebuild our lives all over again, but instead of doing it together as we had always done with Má at the helm, each of us did it alone in silence." That silence "can make a person do crazy things, like join a cult, track down the killer's family, seek justice through the help of spirit channelers, and put on a touring one-woman show about my family tragedy."
Lieu spent decades chasing answers, trying to understand who Má was--her experiences, decisions, hopes, plans. She lays bare her attempts to "reconstruct" and "resurrect" Má with tenacious honesty and vivid desperation, but also balances this with surprising humor and grace. Lieu's revealing, chatty writing style proves both intimately confessional and undeniably inviting: her own "[s]eeking the truth" becomes rallying encouragement for readers to talk, share, explore, and ultimately forgive in order to live. --Terry Hong
Shelf Talker: Susan Lieu channels decades of grief over her childhood experience of losing her mother into a mesmerizing, raw debut memoir, The Manicurist's Daughter.