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wendys_lit's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
YESSSS GOD A DELICIOUS MEMOIR!!! A memoir about being an immigrant daughter, a queer daughter, a hungry child, hungry for affection, for normality, for individuality, for FAMILY….
I think what this book does best is just show how much immigrant daughters carry, especially if you are the child of parents who survived or escaped a war in their home country. Trying not to forget where you came from while being made sure to assimilate into your new so-called home is so exhausting for a parent, let alone a child. Another beautiful thing here is just…sisterly and brotherly unity. This just…deep understanding that yeah, we both know how mom and dad can be, and how life should be. People’s perceptions of you are always on your mind, but how your parents view you is never something you escape from.
Beautiful read that the author herself does the audiobook for. Again and again I remember why memoirs are my bread and butter.
I think what this book does best is just show how much immigrant daughters carry, especially if you are the child of parents who survived or escaped a war in their home country. Trying not to forget where you came from while being made sure to assimilate into your new so-called home is so exhausting for a parent, let alone a child. Another beautiful thing here is just…sisterly and brotherly unity. This just…deep understanding that yeah, we both know how mom and dad can be, and how life should be. People’s perceptions of you are always on your mind, but how your parents view you is never something you escape from.
Beautiful read that the author herself does the audiobook for. Again and again I remember why memoirs are my bread and butter.
careinthelibrary's review against another edition
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Colonisation, Murder, Grief, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Xenophobia, Racism, Genocide, Death, and War
Moderate: Torture and Violence
purplepierogi's review
4.0
[b:Ma and Me: A Memoir|58772754|Ma and Me A Memoir|Putsata Reang|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1634034133l/58772754._SY75_.jpg|92535760] is a personal reckoning of so much: transnational identity, intergenerational trauma and survivor's guilt, queer love and shame, and really what we owe to those we love vs what we owe to ourselves. Putsata presents us with the incredible story of her mother's experience as a young woman first fleeing arranged marriage and then the Cambodian genocide, giving up so much of herself as the interminable immigrant experience wrests her choices from her control. Reang then recounts her upbringing in the US, close relationship with her mother and her suffocating expectations, and emotional exploration of her queerness and her identity as a Cambodian severed from her roots. as the best memoirs do, Ma and Me invites us to peer alongside Reang's life and learn not only of her personal life and relationships, but about a culture and diaspora experience.
regarding the structure, it has an interesting out of sync quality. Reang is a talented writer, and at times draws paragraphs directly from interviews with her mother, including parables, and in other times gives sweeping foreshadowing giving us glimpses of the future of their relationship, tying generations and continents with these references. I think it works, for the most part. we're given threads of phone calls and feelings that stretch and weave together over decades, and I can see how maybe it keeps the narrative going with little pieces of foreshadowing, but it also felt a little repetitive at points.
thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to netgalley for an advanced copy.
regarding the structure, it has an interesting out of sync quality. Reang is a talented writer, and at times draws paragraphs directly from interviews with her mother, including parables, and in other times gives sweeping foreshadowing giving us glimpses of the future of their relationship, tying generations and continents with these references. I think it works, for the most part. we're given threads of phone calls and feelings that stretch and weave together over decades, and I can see how maybe it keeps the narrative going with little pieces of foreshadowing, but it also felt a little repetitive at points.
thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to netgalley for an advanced copy.
chelsealchampion's review
5.0
Very forthcoming and honest memoir, told in the voice of the author herself (listened to the audiobook).
peggykelly95's review
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
I really enjoyed the relationship between Put and her mother. The detail about Cambodia and growing up in Put's household was interesting.