A Review of Beth Nguyen’s Owner of a Lonely Heart (Scribner, 2023)
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ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
*reviewer’s note: In my aim to cover as much ground and texts as I can, I’m focusing on shorter lightning reviews that get to the gist of my reading experience! As Asian American literature has boomed, my time to read this exponentially growing archive has only diminished. I will do my best, as always!
Beth Nguyen’s Owner of a Lonely Heart (Scribner, 2023) was part of my winter break vacation reading. At first, I didn’t even realize that Beth is quite the well-known writer, although I’ve read both of her prior novels and memoir. Indeed, Beth, who has published under the name Bich Minh Nguyen, makes a major change to her publication moniker in her latest work. I will speak on that issue later, but I will provide you with the marketing description, as per usual: “At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only 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 portrait of things left unsaid’ (The New York Times), 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—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an ‘unforgettable’ (People) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthood.”
This read was a difficult one, as we get into the complicated family dynamics that Beth faces mostly in relation to her biological mother. They often remain at an arm’s distance from each other, but Nguyen continually finds herself drawn back into her mother’s orbit. It’s interesting to see how Nguyen outlines the different responses between herself and her sister. Nguyen’s sister tends to put a little bit more distance between herself and their biological mother, while Nguyen incessantly seeks her out, despite the often uneven interactions they have. Nguyen also explains the shift in her publication name, as “Beth” is a name that she has often used growing up and well into her adulthood, especially because “Bich” has been such a problem for her as a child and as a racial minority having lived in many areas that are not very diverse. Perhaps, the most incredible aspect of this memoir is a conscientious act of withholding. The readers know well by the concluding pages that Nguyen is desperately seeking more information about her mother, how her mother came to know her father, and how her mother truly fell out of their lives. The conversations up to the end of the memoir are stilted, oblique, filled with absences. Finally, there is a breakthrough, but Nguyen chooses not to detail any of it, to keep it in the realm of private utterance. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the memoir as a form tends to expect forms of transparency and even expansive vulnerability, as personal details are shared to a reading audience often filled with strangers. Nguyen’s choice thus felt incredibly appropriate, a climactic un-reveal that gets at the heart of memoir’s complicated nature of utterance and revelation. We are waiting for that information, but never get it, and we understand that we should not have it. It is in this sense that Nguyen’s memoir truly soars.
Buy the Book Here
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ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
*reviewer’s note: In my aim to cover as much ground and texts as I can, I’m focusing on shorter lightning reviews that get to the gist of my reading experience! As Asian American literature has boomed, my time to read this exponentially growing archive has only diminished. I will do my best, as always!
Beth Nguyen’s Owner of a Lonely Heart (Scribner, 2023) was part of my winter break vacation reading. At first, I didn’t even realize that Beth is quite the well-known writer, although I’ve read both of her prior novels and memoir. Indeed, Beth, who has published under the name Bich Minh Nguyen, makes a major change to her publication moniker in her latest work. I will speak on that issue later, but I will provide you with the marketing description, as per usual: “At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only 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 portrait of things left unsaid’ (The New York Times), 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—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an ‘unforgettable’ (People) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthood.”
This read was a difficult one, as we get into the complicated family dynamics that Beth faces mostly in relation to her biological mother. They often remain at an arm’s distance from each other, but Nguyen continually finds herself drawn back into her mother’s orbit. It’s interesting to see how Nguyen outlines the different responses between herself and her sister. Nguyen’s sister tends to put a little bit more distance between herself and their biological mother, while Nguyen incessantly seeks her out, despite the often uneven interactions they have. Nguyen also explains the shift in her publication name, as “Beth” is a name that she has often used growing up and well into her adulthood, especially because “Bich” has been such a problem for her as a child and as a racial minority having lived in many areas that are not very diverse. Perhaps, the most incredible aspect of this memoir is a conscientious act of withholding. The readers know well by the concluding pages that Nguyen is desperately seeking more information about her mother, how her mother came to know her father, and how her mother truly fell out of their lives. The conversations up to the end of the memoir are stilted, oblique, filled with absences. Finally, there is a breakthrough, but Nguyen chooses not to detail any of it, to keep it in the realm of private utterance. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the memoir as a form tends to expect forms of transparency and even expansive vulnerability, as personal details are shared to a reading audience often filled with strangers. Nguyen’s choice thus felt incredibly appropriate, a climactic un-reveal that gets at the heart of memoir’s complicated nature of utterance and revelation. We are waiting for that information, but never get it, and we understand that we should not have it. It is in this sense that Nguyen’s memoir truly soars.
Buy the Book Here
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