Owner of A Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen

 

Publisher: Scribner

On Sale Date: July 4 2023

Pages: 256

I reviewed a review copy from the publisher through Netgalley.com

In Owner of A Lonely Heart, author Beth Nguyen writes about her life.

When Beth was just eight months old, her father took her sister, uncles and grandmother on a flee out of Saigon to the USA, after the Vietnam war ended. Beth's mother stayed behind in Vietnam, and the family would not see of speak with her for untl Beth was nineteen years old. She would not spend more then 24 hours together with her mom in her life. Many attempts to meet up with her mom, who lived at the other side of the USA from Beth, ended up in dissapointment, when she would not show up because she had to go to the casino, instead of meeting Beth and her one year old son for the first time. But Beth refuses to be angry at her, because for her family  wasn’t angry. After all, “family meant my dad, uncles, grandmother, sister, and me.” Further on, the memoir describes Beth's vision on being a mother, refugee and American and on being seen as an outsider, and why she changed her name from Bich to Beth.

I found this a good and interesting read, and as I have read previous books by Beth Nguyen, I was very curious for this read. Did it live up my expectations? Yes and no. Her story about her mother is not an easy one, but i loved how Beth wrote about it so honestly and openly, even when things in her life wheren't pretty. But at sometimes I found that she was a bit too negative on how she thinks about how ''white'' people treat her. Ofcourse racism is not good, never, but you have to be carefull not to polarize, and see that not every white person thinks the same and is racist. This also comes to light in the book when she visits the musical Miss Saigon with her white boyfriend. When I read this part, It made me feel like the author thinks every white person thinks in a bad way about Vietnamese people, especially the creators of the musical.(For me personally Miss Saigon did the opposite; it triggered a lifelong interest in Vietnam) So I found it not my favorite part, but I have respect for Beth's vision on the musical and I can also understand why she sees it this way. 

It is not my most favorite read, but it is a good and well written memoir.