OWNER OF A LONELY HEART

A quietly moving memoir that grapples with what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a refugee, an American.

Nguyen, author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, was 8 months old when her father spirited most of her family out of Saigon the day before the city fell to the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975. Her mother, however, was left behind, and much of the book probes her mother’s absence and reappearance. The title of the first chapter, “Twenty-Four Hours,” refers to the total time Nguyen spent with her mother “over the course of my life.” Each meeting was fleeting, and despite her attempts to connect, they remained strangers. “Our histories had separated long ago and had never truly met again,” she writes. Once, instead of meeting Nguyen and her 1-year-old grandson for the first time, she visited the local casino. Surprisingly, the author wasn’t angry. After all, when they left Saigon, “family meant my dad, uncles, grandmother, sister, and me.” Over the course of the text, Nguyen’s autobiography becomes a meditation on motherhood and memory. The author considers her other maternal figures: her grandmother Noi; her stepmother, her “real” mom; and White mothers such as her high school boyfriend’s mom. Nguyen also wonders how her two young sons will remember her—“My relationship with my children is also my relationship with time…with the mothers I have known, with the mother I have never known,” she writes, “It is a catch in the throat. It is the edge of tears”—and she explores her identity as a refugee navigating an America that saw her as an outsider. One chapter focuses on her name, which she changed from Bich (a kind of jade) to Beth. “As Bich, I am a foreigner who makes people a little uncomfortable,” she writes. “As Beth, I am never complimented on my English.”

A ruminative, unadorned, lyrical look at origins, family, and belonging.