"I'm not usually a memoir person, but this one had me hooked from the first page. Beginning with the creamy taste of eggs in a refugee camp, Ly Tran beautifully evokes the vulnerability, hope, wonder, and even hilarity of young childhood, even while relating the harrowing details of her early life—the youngest child in a family of refugees from Vietnam, living in poverty in the Bronx in the 1990s, Ly's father, a man haunted by PTSD acquired through ten years as a prisoner of war, wields tight and often damaging control over her family, yet also inspires her through his stories. Her tender yet clear-headed depiction of her father calls to mind Frank McCourt's similarly dexterous depiction of the charms and failures of his own father in Angela's Ashes. And yet Ly has her own voice entirely: strong, vivid, and determined to the very end."
Publisher Scribner
Publication Date 2021-06-01
Section New Hardcover - Biography / All Staff Suggestions / Nonfiction Suggestions / Adah H.
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9781501118814
An intimate, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir recounting a young girl’s journey from war-torn Vietnam to Ridgewood, Queens, and her struggle to find her voice amid clashing cultural expectations.
Ly Tran is just a toddler in 1993 when she and her family immigrate from a small town along the Mekong river in Vietnam to a two-bedroom railroad apartment in Queens. Ly’s father, a former lieutenant in the South Vietnamese army, spent nearly a decade as a POW, and their resettlement is made possible through a humanitarian program run by the US government. Soon after they arrive, Ly joins her parents and three older brothers sewing ties and cummerbunds piece-meal on their living room floor to make ends meet.
As they navigate this new landscape, Ly finds herself torn between two worlds. She knows she must honor her parents’ Buddhist faith and contribute to the family livelihood, working long hours at home and eventually as a manicurist alongside her mother at a nail salon in Brownsville, Brooklyn, that her parents take over. But at school, Ly feels the mounting pressure to blend in.
A growing inability to see the blackboard presents new challenges, especially when her father forbids her from getting glasses, calling her diagnosis of poor vision a government conspiracy. His frightening temper and paranoia leave an indelible mark on Ly’s sense of self. Who is she outside of everything her family expects of her?
Told in a spare, evocative voice that, with flashes of humor, weaves together her family’s immigration experience with her own fraught and courageous coming of age, House of Sticks is a timely and powerful portrait of one girl’s struggle to reckon with her heritage and forge her own path.
