Susan Lieu is a Vietnamese-American born to parents who fled Vietnam and sought refuge in the United States a few years before her birth. At age eleven, her family ran two pretty successful nail salons in California, and Susan's mother was able to bring some of her family still in Vietnam over to work under her employ and stay under her roof. But then tragedy struck. In late September of 1996, after a heated argument with her mother early in the morning over a school sports try-out, Susan received word that her mother was in critical condition at the hospital. It would be a while after her mother's passing that Susan learned the truth - her mother had gone in for plastic surgery, an abdominoplasty (commonly known as a "tummy tuck"), had been left without oxygen for approximately fourteen minutes before the surgeon called paramedics, and she'd been taken off of life support after her family was informed that significant brain damage had been sustained and there would be very little quality of life. At such a young age, Susan had to face so many questions, including "why did the strongest woman in my life want to change something about herself?", "why am I the only one in my family who wants to talk about my mother's passing?", and "who was my mother, really?" What followed were years of visiting Vietnam to find family who'd tell her stories of her mother's life before America, joining and eventually leaving a cult, assisting in the formation of a family chocolate company, starting stand-up comedy and quitting after an unfortunate incident with a heckler, getting married, digging through transcripts of the court case launched against the doctor who performed her mother's botched surgery, creating a one-person show called 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother, reworking the show and performing its sequel, Over 140 LBS, 8 months pregnant, writing a memoir with a one-year old during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and releasing her debut, The Manicurist's Daughter, at age 38, the same age her mother was when she passed.
**while neither my advanced copy nor the description by the publisher provided any content or trigger warnings, I would like to note those who are sensitive to comments about weight, discussions about unhealthy relationships with food, death of a parent, and fatal complications due to surgical malpractice should exercise caution when picking up this book**
I've always found memoirs particularly difficult to rate and critic, because what authority do I have to comment on the real lives of other people who have composed a written work reliving their trauma and struggles. With Susan Lieu writing in a non-linear structures, visiting stories from her childhood and adult life in a non-chronological order, it sometimes felt repetitive, or as if a lesson learned had been forgotten (simply because the lesson hadn't been learned yet). I appreciated that the book was separated into six sections to correspond with the six tones of Vietnamese and therefore the six different definitions of "ma" - mother, rice seedling, tomb, ghost, but, and horse. I didn't expect to learn about how Susan became involved in, what she determines to be, a cult, and how after losing her mother she was just aching to feel like she was loved and she belonged somewhere, and how these individuals exploited her pain. Some might find Susan's discussions surrounding spiritual guides and learning about the future (and hearing from those who've passed) from those connected to the spirit world off-putting - this practice isn't something I personally believe in or have experienced in my lifetime, but that doesn't make it impossible or something that should be concreted dismissed. I connected with Susan when she discussed her struggles with learning and speaking Vietnamese, and how she felt she was disconnected from her heritage when family members commented on her inability to speak the language. I wasn't totally a fan of how it seemed Susan was both accusing her relatives of not respecting her grieving process (wanting to learn more about her mother before she died) while simultaneously not respecting their own grieving processes (not wanting to discuss her life as it became too painful to think about it after her death). There certainly isn't one singular way to grieve, and I don't think anyone in the family, in the end, truly believed that either of these mechanisms were healthy (Susan's way led to an obsessive whirlwind that led her to living more in the past, and her relative's way led to an inability to truly express their emotions), but throughout the book Susan constantly prodded her relatives for information while not respecting their decision to not talk about things, and consistently believed she was the one in the right. I found myself wishing there was more of an open discussion around societal beauty standards, especially in communities of color in the United States, that can lead to exploitation of primarily femme-presenting individuals by the cosmetic industry. Don't get me wrong, there were some paragraphs where this is brought up, and what was there I loved, I just wish it was expanded upon.
And lastly, I wasn't exactly sure what Susan's stance on cosmetic surgeries are, as there are a few conflicting discussions about it in the book. It's understandable for her to be wary of any procedure, especially non-medically-necessary ones, after losing a loved one in the way that she did. But there are several instances where she actively tries to discourage others from receiving similar procedures, and even when it's explicitly stated that it is their choice to do what they want with their body she still believes that they are a victim of societal exploitation. I appreciated that there is a moment where she discusses how it's important that, if you do choose to receive similar procedures, to ensure that the medical professional performing it has valid credentials, that you fully understand any possible complications, and that you are not being pressured into it without fully wanting it yourself.
In conclusion, The Manicurist's Daughter was another memoir that I wasn't expecting to pick up in 2024, but came on my radar thanks to BookishFirst and I'm glad that I picked it up. It's a powerful story about love, family, loss, grief, and finding yourself in the midst of falling apart. *Thank you to BookishFirst and the publisher, Celadon Books, for the early copy, all thoughts and opinions are my own.*
**while neither my advanced copy nor the description by the publisher provided any content or trigger warnings, I would like to note those who are sensitive to comments about weight, discussions about unhealthy relationships with food, death of a parent, and fatal complications due to surgical malpractice should exercise caution when picking up this book**
I've always found memoirs particularly difficult to rate and critic, because what authority do I have to comment on the real lives of other people who have composed a written work reliving their trauma and struggles. With Susan Lieu writing in a non-linear structures, visiting stories from her childhood and adult life in a non-chronological order, it sometimes felt repetitive, or as if a lesson learned had been forgotten (simply because the lesson hadn't been learned yet). I appreciated that the book was separated into six sections to correspond with the six tones of Vietnamese and therefore the six different definitions of "ma" - mother, rice seedling, tomb, ghost, but, and horse. I didn't expect to learn about how Susan became involved in, what she determines to be, a cult, and how after losing her mother she was just aching to feel like she was loved and she belonged somewhere, and how these individuals exploited her pain. Some might find Susan's discussions surrounding spiritual guides and learning about the future (and hearing from those who've passed) from those connected to the spirit world off-putting - this practice isn't something I personally believe in or have experienced in my lifetime, but that doesn't make it impossible or something that should be concreted dismissed. I connected with Susan when she discussed her struggles with learning and speaking Vietnamese, and how she felt she was disconnected from her heritage when family members commented on her inability to speak the language. I wasn't totally a fan of how it seemed Susan was both accusing her relatives of not respecting her grieving process (wanting to learn more about her mother before she died) while simultaneously not respecting their own grieving processes (not wanting to discuss her life as it became too painful to think about it after her death). There certainly isn't one singular way to grieve, and I don't think anyone in the family, in the end, truly believed that either of these mechanisms were healthy (Susan's way led to an obsessive whirlwind that led her to living more in the past, and her relative's way led to an inability to truly express their emotions), but throughout the book Susan constantly prodded her relatives for information while not respecting their decision to not talk about things, and consistently believed she was the one in the right. I found myself wishing there was more of an open discussion around societal beauty standards, especially in communities of color in the United States, that can lead to exploitation of primarily femme-presenting individuals by the cosmetic industry. Don't get me wrong, there were some paragraphs where this is brought up, and what was there I loved, I just wish it was expanded upon.
And lastly, I wasn't exactly sure what Susan's stance on cosmetic surgeries are, as there are a few conflicting discussions about it in the book. It's understandable for her to be wary of any procedure, especially non-medically-necessary ones, after losing a loved one in the way that she did. But there are several instances where she actively tries to discourage others from receiving similar procedures, and even when it's explicitly stated that it is their choice to do what they want with their body she still believes that they are a victim of societal exploitation. I appreciated that there is a moment where she discusses how it's important that, if you do choose to receive similar procedures, to ensure that the medical professional performing it has valid credentials, that you fully understand any possible complications, and that you are not being pressured into it without fully wanting it yourself.
In conclusion, The Manicurist's Daughter was another memoir that I wasn't expecting to pick up in 2024, but came on my radar thanks to BookishFirst and I'm glad that I picked it up. It's a powerful story about love, family, loss, grief, and finding yourself in the midst of falling apart. *Thank you to BookishFirst and the publisher, Celadon Books, for the early copy, all thoughts and opinions are my own.*