Thomas's Reviews > The Manicurist's Daughter

I really liked the emotional honesty in this book. Susan Lieu writes about how at 13 years old, her mother passed away after a botched plastic surgery procedure. Lieu is real about her grief and all the dysfunctional (e.g., joining a cult) and more functional (e.g., learning about her parents’ refuge stories and lives in Vietnam) ways she coped with her loss and her intergenerational trauma. Throughout the memoir Lieu incorporates interesting and nuanced themes related to body image, emotional and physical abuse, and learning how to love yourself and where you come from. It’s absolutely wild and sickening that a white male plastic surgeon was profiting off vulnerable Vietnamese women’s body image insecurities, and Lieu is courageous for writing about her and her mother’s story. As a side note, I enjoyed reading about her and her Korean husband and how she called out a commercial she auditioned for that was forcing the Asian woman/white man trope.

I did find the writing quality a bit uneven throughout the memoir and could see Lieu’s experience as a performer come through, in that this may have been adapted from her show. I also didn’t love her comment about how getting married to a Korean person is like marrying up or dating up within the Asian community. I know she might have meant it as a joke or as a jab toward her own internalized stuff, but I do think there is bias toward East Asians (e.g., they often have lighter skin) within the Asian American community and I don’t love when fellow Southeast Asians perpetuate this without at least a bit more rebuttal. Still, I appreciated the unapologetic Vietnamese-ness of this memoir and am glad that Lieu put her story out into the world.