Publisher's Weekly Review
Playwright Lieu delivers a stirring debut memoir focused on the fallout from her mother's untimely death in 1996. Dividing the account into six sections, each corresponding to different meanings of the Vietnamese word ma ("Mother," "Ghost," "Tomb," "But," "Newborn Rice Seedling," and "Horse"), Lieu traces her anguish across decades and continents. The youngest of four children, and the only one born in the U.S., Lieu grew up helping her Vietnamese mother, Hà Thi (or "Jennifer" to her American clients) operate several nail salons in Northern California. When Hà Thi died suddenly after receiving an abdominoplasty from a surgeon with a history of malpractice, 11-year-old Lieu was set adrift. She took multiple trips to Vietnam as a young adult, attempting to understand her mother within the contexts of both the country's history and her own family. She also consulted mediums and old family recipes in attempts to conjure her late mother's spirit. After settling back in the U.S., Lieu wrote and performed an autobiographical play that fostered dialogue about Hà Thi among her mostly tight-lipped relatives, and helped ease tensions between Lieu and her often-harsh father. Lieu's candor about her mother's faults (body-shaming chief among them) and righteous anger at the surgeon who killed her set this apart from similar fare. It's a generous portrait of grief that will touch those who've struggled with loss. Agent: Monika Verma, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (Mar.)
Kirkus Review
A Chinese Vietnamese woman uses performance art to grieve her mother's death. When Lieu--playwright and creator of the one-woman show 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother--was 11, her mother, a successful business owner and Vietnamese refugee, died while getting a "tummy tuck." In the ensuing years, the author's family, including her three older siblings, refused to talk about their mother, let alone answer questions about her untimely death. As an adult, Lieu began creating performance art; during an acting class, she unexpectedly found herself exploring the impact of her mother's story. Later, the author tried to contact the family of the surgeon whose malpractice led to her mother's death, pore over the depositions from the trial that followed, and traveled to Vietnam to find someone who would finally answer her questions about what her mother was really like. Lieu's research uncovered the ways in which her mother's perfectionism and warped body image--conditions she shared with Lieu--contributed to her decision to undergo the procedure. Most of all, though, the author obsessed about her mother's death because she wanted to feel less detached from her family. "I believed that once they validated my experience," she writes, "I could finally free myself from the haunting journey of going through Má's death alone." Unexpectedly, Lieu got what she always wanted during a "postshow Q & A" where, in front of an audience of 140 people, the author's siblings finally gave her the answers and validations she spent years seeking. While parts of the first half of the narrative lack focus, the second half--about the author's investigation of her mother's death--is fast-paced, vulnerable, humorous, and empathetic. Lieu's compassionate epiphanies about her family's reasons for silence are particularly poignant. An intimate Asian American memoir about family, memory, and grief. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Lieu's childhood was a frenzied blur of food, aunts, and nail salons, all under the firm control of her mother (Ma), who had seemingly achieved the American dream after fleeing Vietnam with Lieu's father in 1981 and settling in California. The first-generation child of refugees, the author grappled with identity, caught between two cultures and mixed messages, torn between dutifully eating meals, then enduring body-shaming from the same elders who prepared them. After losing Ma to complications from plastic surgery, however, 11-year-old Lieu and her family struggled to coexist and eventually crumbled. When loved ones refused to discuss Ma, Lieu looked to her memories for direction as she pursued college, employment, religion, and marriage before researching the details of her mother's death while attempting reconciliation with her family. Her quest led to her one-woman show, "140 Lbs: How Beauty Killed My Mother," a means of healing. Drawn from that show, which toured nationally to great acclaim, Lieu's achingly honest debut is a stirring addition to Vietnamese American memoirs that will resonate with anyone coping with loss.
