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.
A portrait of things left unsaid ... Nguyen seems aware that her anxieties are small in comparison to the existential sacrifice her family made. But this is a memoir for those late-night moments: deeply ruminative and therapeutically self-indulgent.
Nguyen puts these experiences into writing, a healing recognition occurs, most movingly through her children, who are able to see and validate things she cannot.
Nguyen is a confident and reliable protagonist even when running up against painful memories, providing readers with enough distance as to almost be objective ... Nguyen has made a journey of facing her origins and contending with the limitations of American narratives, and we are lucky to be invited along the way.
