The Manicurist's Daughter is a memoir written by Susan Lieu, a first generation Vietnamese-American woman whose mother and father fled communist Vietnam in the aftermath of the war. After establishing a home base in California, Susan's indefatigable mother Jennifer works to bring over members of her family. They share one home and all work in the very successful family business - a nail salon business with two locations. Life is chaotic and noisy until Jennifer decides to have a plastic surgery operation and very tragically dies at the age of 38 due to medical malpractice. This completely upends Susan's life and launches her on a quest to understand her enigmatic mother and the circumstances around her death.

The Manicurist's Daughter is a deeply emotional and personal story. Lieu struggled to come to terms with the loss and to find any common ground with her own family members. The impact of war and trauma had emotionally scarred her family, leaving them distant and unable to express emotion. This trauma was passed on to the younger generation as well, leaving Susan feeling isolated and alone in her own family. Years of body shaming and absorbing negative cultural beliefs around beauty also impacted the women in the family, and Susan in particular, who had been subjected to familial shame about her appetite and weight. The memoir explains Susan's journey to process all her feelings around her mother's death and her difficult family relationships.

I found this memoir a very challenging read. It was an interesting glimpse into another culture but it was not an easy read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Manicurist’s Daughter
By: Susan Lieu
Genre: Memoir

✨ The Manicurist’s Daughter is a memoir of Susan Lieu’s life, mainly focused on the impact of her Vietnamese immigrant mother’s death from a tummy tuck when Susan was 11.

✨ This memoir explores difficult topics, including the death of a parent, navigating intergenerational trauma, PTSD, body shaming, societal/cultural beauty standards, family relationships, cultural identity / belonging, motherhood, and pursuing your own journey in life.

✨ We follow the authors journey to come to grips dealing with this unexpected loss, which includes doing everythingfrom joining a meditative cult, writing a one woman show, seeking answers from spiritualists & fortune tellers, embarking on a brief attempt at vengeance against the doctor who had killed her mother, and finally her path to motherhood and healing.

✨ I loved that I learned so much about Vietnamese families, culture and food while reading this. That aspect of Susan’s memoir was fascinating and I would lightly compare it to the memoir Educated because it immerses you in a family and world that is foreign (unless you were raised in a prepper family like in Educated or a nail salon owning family of Vietnamese immigrants like in this book).

✨ The author isn’t always a completely sympathetic character (ie making her family talk about the loss of her mother when they’re not comfortable doing so), but it reminds us how different people grieve and that family silence around grief is harmful, especially to children who need a way to process their feelings.

✨ As a now middle-aged woman (OOF), the desire to retain youth and consider plastic surgery resonated, but I appreciated this book because it brought to attention some of the kinds of doctors that can operate in that space and that we may see our own flaws more than anyone else does.

✨ In the end, I loved this memoir and thought that it was an emotional trek that is worth the read!

❓What is your cultural family background - and a favorite food / tradition you cherish from your culture?

**Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon books for my digital and physical review copies of this memoir!**

While this is outside my normal reading genre, I received this one through the mail from Celadon and later requested from NetGalley so I could alternate between digital and physical copies. I love being "pushed" outside of my reading comfort zones and this was a great memoir to explore other cultures and especially learn about the struggles that immigrants deal with on a regular basis.

I think this one would have had a higher rating for me if it was a little bit shorter. Again, memoirs aren't my go to read, but even so I found this to be a bit repetitive and drawn out. If The Manicurist's Daughter had been about 50 pages shorter I think I would have appreciated the reading experience a lot more.

Check this one out if you like memoirs, learning about other cultures, and emotional writing!

It takes a lot for me to continue reading a memoir with enthusiasm. I need to find something in there that speaks to me, that I can relate to, that I can appreciate. While this memoir was focusing on the rise and fall of the American dream for Lieu family, I considered this a memoir of a mother and daughter, whose behavior impacted each other deeply. It was a story of women who needed to find themselves.

I laughed it hard when Susan Lieu said USA was embedded in her name as the first born child in the US. I see how important it was for her family to establish that she was American. I love how these small details that no one would recognize were actually very well thought by an immigrant family. Susan was the first born in the US thus first major business in his country was named after her. Her family's hopes and dreams were embodied in her existence. But just like every young adult, she had other plans. She was a great student and got into Harvard (which would be success story every immigrant family wanted for themselves). However, her mother's untimely passing and her need for mother figure put her on a soul searching path (i.e., cult :D until she had enough).

Eventually she got to wear her mother's shoes. She became a mother herself and had a health scare that could have ended her life too. Then, she got to wear her father's shoes. She stepped back and saw how much her father cared about her. It was only that her father did not know to show his love. I really liked how no BS, very direct and raw this memoir was!

Whoa...talk about an emotional and raw memoir! This one is definitely that. As an Asian American, Vietnamese to be more specific, you read about Susan's life as a daughter of a manicurist. Susan tells you a bit about her parents' life before coming to America to live the American Dream. She takes you through her childhood, always working hard and helping her mom, dad, and aunts at the nail salon.

This book is also about Susan's journey to mourn the lost of her mother. Grief comes in many different stages and takes time to process. You read about how Susan tries her best to grief and remember her mom and how her grieving process is different from her siblings and her dad.

Finally going through the grieving process at a much later time, Susan has a different appreciation for the little things her parents have done for her and still do that once annoyed her when she was little. Everyone shows love in different ways and Susan does a complete 180. Instead of the anger she has from her mother's death, she finds appreciation and is able to heal from the past.

I really appreciate how the author wrote about her childhood. Growing up Asian American isn't always easy and you can truly see how much hard work her entire family has put into living the life in America. You can see and appreciate the little things that Susan appreciates. You definitely feel anger and heartbroken over the lost of her mom.

If I am completely honest I almost didn’t pick up this book to read it. Don’t get me wrong, the description was interesting and I love when a writer is willing to share so honestly their emotional journey. But since losing my own father a couple of years ago I am leery of stories about grief. Grief is sneaky and a life long process, so I try to avoid the things that I know will tear me up so badly. I’m glad I didn’t let that hesitation stop me from reading this book. Susan does an excellent job describing her process of grief. While I could relate to some aspects of her grief Susan’s experiences were vastly different than mine and I loved the glimpse into her life. Susan’s parents were immigrants to America and worked hard in the nail salons they owned. When Susan was 11 her mother died from complications from a tummy tuck. Being the youngest Susan had the least memories, but her family pushed moving on and working hard. Susan spent years working to process how she felt and trying to discover exactly who her mother was. There was a lot of rich Vietnamese culture and the descriptions of the food were amazing and left me hungry, This book is an emotional roller coaster. It is raw and brutally honest and I definitely recommend it.

I loved the Manicurist's Daughter—Susan Lieu takes the audience along as she works through the emotions of her mother's death, her family's silence around the death, and untangling the complicated relationship she's had with her body since childhood.

One thing I loved from Lieu is how unapologetic she was. Daughter of Vietnamese refugees, she brings us into her home, mixing in the Vietnamese language, food, and culture in with every chapter. To be honest, it took me a moment to get certain characters straight in my head because of similarities to names, but I feel like we would have lost the heart of the memoir if she tried to Americanize it.

I loved how she mixed in her childhood memories within the more present-day story rather than just having it be chronological. Given how grief is so messy and confusing, I felt like it really added to taking the reader along with her process of uncovering and working through her emotions.

Her writing was straight forward, which I always find works in memoirs rather than being too flower-y or overwrought with metaphors.

Though the book dragged just a bit, I really felt like Lieu shined in the last third of the memoir. You can tell this was the crux of the novel and she delivered on the emotions and the writing itself. I cried for the duration of this section and read it in one sitting.

The Manicurist's Daughter is a heavier read but Leiu wrote with such grace and clarity, that I had to give it five stars.

Reading 2024
Book 51: The Manicurist's Daughter by Susan Lieu

Saw this on a few most anticipated books of 2024 lists. #Netgalley had this one as a Read Now selection so I scooped it up for my Kindle.

Synopsis: An emotionally raw memoir about the crumbling of the American Dream and a daughter of refugees who searches for answers after her mother dies during plastic surgery.

Review: Manicurist’s Daughter was an intense look at family, tragedy, body image, immigrant experience, and life. It took me a while to get into the book, the chapters were long and I would fall asleep since I read my Kindle in bed. After I got settled into the groove of this memoir, it was really good. The month of February was a big memoir month for me for some reason. Again my rating for memoirs is something I base on my connection with the story. 4⭐️.

The Manicurist’s Daughter is a beautifully written memoir by Susan Lieu.

Susan Lieu’s family immigrated to the US from Vietnam in 1980s. Over the next few years her mother set up two successful nail salons and orchestrated their success. When Susan was eleven, her mother passed away from a botched tummy tuck surgery. After the funeral, nobody was allowed to talk about her what happened and to Susan, so much was a mystery.

Over the course of the next twenty years, Susan kept searching for the answers to her questions: why would the most perfect person in her life want to alter her body that way? Why will nobody tell her about her mother’s past in Vietnam? How did the surgeon who performed the procedure go on operating after her death.

As she tries to find answers to these questions, she’s also working through processing her own grief and her own life, especially as her father remarries and her mother’s family move out of their house. She’s not fully sure she’s going down the right path career wise and without knowing her mother’s story, you get the sense that she’s not fully whole without it.

The detail that Susan has allowed the reader to learn about her family feels so welcoming in this story. It feels like we’re right there with her, reading the depositions from her mother’s case and trying to get the answers she needs to find peace. I really liked this aspect of her story. It just felt so welcoming and open.

I really enjoyed this memoir.

Thank you to Netgalley and Celadon Books for this ARC in exchange for a honest review.

This is a good book, but it was slightly repetitive for me. Susan Lieu did a good job describing her life story and the complicated story of her mother, but something felt missing. I love non-fiction books, but I didn't connect with the author. There was something about Lieu I just didn't like. She came across as a know-it-all and busybody. I don't think there was enough material for a full-length book but caused the story to feel repetitive and underwhelming. I wish this book would've tugged at my heartstrings more. It was just ok. I will say whoever did the cover art for this book did a phenomenal job. Wow. That's one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen.

Thank you, Netgalley and Celadon for the digital ARC.

The Manicurist’s Daughter depicts Lieu’s journey to grieve her mother’s death after an elective cosmetic surgery and go through womanhood as a first-generation Vietnamese-American without her. While this memoir tackles serious topics, like intergenerational trauma, impossible beauty standards, and classism in the United States, Lieu manages to insert humor as well. Overall, this was a well-written memoir that I strongly recommend you add to your shelf!

“My mother was dead, but in a sense, we were too, and I was powerless to change it.”

The Manicurist’s Daughter is a raw and evocative memoir about grief, intergenerational trauma, family, language, culture, food, body image, spirituality and self-discovery. In this book, Susan Lieu details her experiences of growing up as child of Vietnamese refugees who fled Vietnam in the 1980s to build a new life in America, no matter what the odds. Through their parents’ blood, sweat and tears, they established Susan’s Nails, a nail salon in California, which eventually expanded to a second location. However at age 11, they lost their mother when she died during a tummy tuck procedure.

It’s a devastating yet inspiring read. As someone who grew up in an Asian household, it is very easy to relate to Lieu’s stories.

“I was not taught to listen to my body, I was taught to listen to my elders.”

The unexpected loss of their mother left her with unanswered questions that no one in her family was willing (or ready) to address. Her father, in particular, consistently dismissed her questions.

“Even on her death anniversary, when we huddled around her grave offering her foods, talking about her was off-limits.”

For two decades, she looked for answers. She went back to Vietnam to explore her roots and had a goal in mind to know who her Má really was as a sister, a daughter and as a person through the eyes of her relatives.

“How could I become a mother if I never knew my own?”

As Asians, we feel most loved through the food our parents and grandparents serve and prepare for us. We are conditioned to just obey whatever the elders in our family say and never attempt to talk back, even if they start voicing out unsolicited remarks about our bodies, which to them is just their way of expressing concern and affection.

“The center of my universe was governed by Má. As much as she was thrilling, she was terrorizing. She made up all the rules and everything would be fine as long as I never pissed her off. And so, gradually, this became my truth; my relationship to food was really about my relationship to family.”

This entire reading experience became more meaningful to me as it reminded me of how fortunate I am to still have precious time to spend with my parents. Also, this book led me to discover how memoirs that touches on Asian culture and traditions has become my favorite subgenre in books.

“If I really wanted to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma, I had to walk into the fire. It was time I stood up for myself.”

Big thanks to Celadon Books and Netgalley for the Digital Review Copy but most importantly, thank you to Susan Lieu for sharing your most vulnerable self to the world and showing us that the journey towards inner peace and forgiveness is both attainable and transformative.

[arc review]
Thank you to Celadon Books for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
The Manicurist’s Daughter releases March 12, 2024

This is a memoir that is rooted in decades of grief and trauma. It encapsulates one of many Asian immigrant family experiences while reflecting and navigating how the death of the author’s mother impacted so much of her childhood and shaped her as a person growing up.

I can imagine that for the author, telling this story was a healing journey, so I commend them for being so open and vulnerable, and I hope they gained the closure they were looking for.

cw: body shaming

I typically enjoy biographies and memoirs. And while I did enjoy the beginnings of The Manicurist’s Daughter, my interest waned after 54% I still managed to skim the remainder of the memoir and I don’t think I missed anything noteworthy.

As a reader that has a tendency to “mouth” foreign words and phrases, the constant barrage of Vietnamese names and phrases became a detriment to my ready enjoyment. I lost track of people and/or relatives, especially when there were only Vietnamese names involved. As such I probably would have enjoyed listening to an audiobook version so I wouldn’t have to fumble over pronunciations.

The memoir wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought the book would delve more into the body image/malpractice angle of her mother as well as the effects of the interratial marriage between her and her Korean husband. But, I just got smatterings of them.

The Manicurist’s Daughter wasn’t the best memoir that I’ve read. But it wasn’t the worst, either. Two okay stars.

I won an ARC from Celadon Books through the Bookish First raffle. I was also invited to read the DRC from Celadon Books through NetGalley. The review herein is completely my own and contains my honest thoughts and opinions.

“Seeking the truth was how I would avenge my mother’s death. I am the manicurist’s daughter, and this is our story.”
Susan lost her mother at a young age to a botched tummy tuck surgery. After her mother’s untimely passing, her family stopped speaking about her completely. They shut down and shut her out. They dealt with her death on their own.
When something tragic happens to us and we are forced to deal with it alone, the unexpressed and unprocessed grief we have can sit inside us for years, out of sight but not fully out of mind. If you let that grief sit there for decades, and then decide one day to try and let it out, it is not going to come out the way you want it to. It is going to explode.
“I had been quiet about my family story for twenty-one years, shaking the details back and forth like a two-liter soda bottle. When Paul, the instructor, asked me to speak, I tried to unscrew the cap with control, but it flew off like a cannon.”
Susan, now in her mid-thirties and planning to have a child, wants to give her dream another try. After all, how can she tell her kid to follow their dreams if she didn’t have the guts to go after her own?
When Susan opens up about what happened to her mother on stage, everything else she has kept bottled inside emerges to the surface. All the questions, all the memories, and all the regrets. And with it rises a need for Susan to know her mother, really know her, before becoming a mother herself. To know her mother she needs to take a trip to the past and reach out to the people who knew her mother the most but refuse to open up—her family.
In this memoir, Susan writes about her experiences with a lot of heavy topics—death, intergenerational trauma, impossible beauty standards, an unhealthy relationship with food, a hatred of her body, unprocessed grief, the unsafe American healthcare system, racism, and classism, but most important of all she talks about the complexity of family. She talks about her family’s impact on her view of her body and the life she apparently “needs” to lead, but also on how they try to show their love for her in their own way. She shows that though they are flawed, she is flawed too. But that does not mean healing is not possible. Despite all the years of suffering, people can come together and heal, even when you think they never will. That is the biggest lesson I can take away from this memoir—if you do some self reflection and put in the effort, you can change. It isn’t easy, but it can be done. If you let out the emotions that you’ve bottled up, you can heal. It is as Susan said: When we feel, we heal.
This memoir is full of emotion and is deeply moving. There was a time in the book when I could actually feel myself tearing up. This book has definitely taught me a lot about the nature of people and how we can heal even when we think we can’t. I simply cannot give it anything less than five stars.

Thanks, Celadon Books and Macmillian Audio, for the early review copies of the e-book and audiobook via NetGalley. (Available 12 Mar 24)

“On the last day of her life, Má, my Vietnamese refugee mother and proud owner of two nail salons, went in for plastic surgery—a tummy tuck, the narrowing of her nostrils, a chin implant—and figured she would be home the next day with her beautiful new body.”

I strongly recommend this memoir, especially as an audiobook. Susan Lieu is a Vietnamese-American who created, wrote, and performed an autobiographical solo theatre show, “140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother.” In this memoir, she fleshes out more of the story of her life and her family’s trauma. The author is funny and a gifted performer, so audio is the way to go (also the best way to appreciate the beautiful Vietnamese language interspersed throughout).

I plan to reread this with my IRL book club read it later this year because there’s much to unpack. The author offers her personal insight into immigrant culture, Vietnamese traditions, generational trauma, and body shaming. I learned, laughed, and even cried a bit.

At about the halfway point it began to drag a bit, but this was still a really good memoir about loss, complicated family dynamics, the immigrant experience, and learning to forgive. If you like Vietnamese food, some of the meal descriptions will have you salivating! Overall a worthy read that would spark lively discussions at book clubs.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

I found this to be a very insightful, reflective and deeply emotional memoir. Susan was not only vulnerable about grieving over her mother's death, but looked at how it impacted everyone in her family for decades. She was also very open about her own faults and worries as she also became a mother.

There were times when I found the writing a bit dry, but I enjoyed the emotional aspect of the memoir.

This is a story written with love, hurt and healing.

4.5 rounded up - A touching memoir that is a must for anyone who has a complicated relationship with their parents, especially immigrant families. I learned so much about Vietnamese culture that I didn’t know, and all the food descriptions left my mouth watering. The cultural beauty standards were incredibly interesting but also heartbreaking. My only criticism would be that occasionally the formatting felt a bit jarring with the reader jumping into Lieu’s memories mid chapter - but that is also a reflection of how memories work in real time. An important read overall.

I received a free e-arc of this book through Netgalley.
This memoir is very personal about the journey of the youngest daughter in a Vietnamese family with 4 children whose mother dies from botched plastic surgery when the younest is only 11. This is the youngest child, Susan's, path through grief and trying to understand who their mother was. A very emotional journey of discovery