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4.43 AVERAGE
4.43 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
it always feels strange to me to give a memoir less than 5 stars. I was mostly thrown early on in the novel that she could remember anything at the age of 3 or 4, especially in such vivid detail. I also felt so sad re: her justification of her father's physical abuse given his expression of love toward the end of the book. It didn't feel just to me, and I really grow frustrated with physical aggression from my parents to children. Despite all this, Ly Tran has a beautiful voice in her work & her writing is simultaneously matter-of-fact and incredibly poignant. Her writing style alone is worth 4+ stars regardless of the details of her memoir at certain ages or whether I agree on how she should cope with what.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Sexual assault, Violence, Xenophobia
Moderate: War
I received a free electronic copy of this book from the publisher for a honest review. The struggles that Ly Tran and her family faced trying acclimate themselves to a new way of life and better opportunities really moved me. I thought that her focus on mental health and the conflict between living split between two cultures was also interesting. I hope more people will read her story and try to understand how hard several people are working just to make it. Ly Tran, thank you for sharing your story. I hope it helps people learn and want to help the people that they encounter in life.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Excellent, powerful, moving & poignant. One of the best memoirs I've read in a long time.
get this girl glasses asap! family immigrates to the states as refugees from vietnam during/post war (dad was political prisoner). follows life from childhood to uni student. readalike to Beautiful Country but this one is better
I really loved this book - at times I wanted to just cry for her. What a life! So many times I felt her defeat and understood why this became so insurmountable. I'm so amazed by the people that stood up and helped her. I loved learning more about the culture as well. There were times I felt it skipped forward too quickly and I needed more on a topic, but understand it is all editing. Loved this book!
Ly Tran’s life isn’t the sole reason that makes her memoir interesting, it’s how she tells her classic immigrant-turned-success story that holds the audience’s attention. We know that Ly probably becomes successful—her biography in the book states that she went to Columbia and double majored, and it’s clear that she’s academically talented. But how did she get there?
Tran’s writing is easy to read, and the natural flow of her sentences made her story come alive. I could picture her upbringing in HD (upon reading more books, I realize they don’t all do this well), especially with the juxtaposition of her childhood apartment to her dorm, the pampered upbringing of the child her parents babysat compared to her upbringing, and her father’s PTSD and anger to the nurturing qualities of Pamela, Dr, Hayes, and Ms. Liu. Although Tran and I had major differences in our upbringings, there were so many situations I related to that illuminated how similar first and second generation Asian Americans are in culture and generational trauma.
Ly Tran doesn’t offer advice on how to overcome generational trauma, but her perseverance and constant fight to overcome almost feels like a solution. I think this book came to me at a time in my life where I have the tools and support to properly break down my upbringing, and Tran’s success is a light to other Asian Americans like her that it is possible to overcome, even with the worst odds against you.
I would highly recommend this book to people, but I would put some trigger warnings for those who might heavily related to Tran. Mentions of SA, trauma, and parental abuse was a little too real and gave me flashbacks to my own life, so I had to take breaks and recollect myself. LIke Know My Name, this is one of the few books I’d give a 5/5.