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Owner of a Lonely Heart

Beth Nguyen

SUMMARY:

At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her father, sister, grandmother, and uncles fled Saigon for America. 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 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, sometimes with her mother alone and sometimes with her sister--Beth tells a coming-of-age story that spans her own Midwestern childhood, her first meeting with her mother, and becoming a parent herself. Vivid and illuminating, Owner of a Lonely Heart is a deeply personal story of family, connection, and belonging: as a daughter, a mother, and as a Vietnamese refugee in America.

TAGS

non-fiction, memoir, vietnam, war, family, parenthood, coming of age, motherhood, culture & society

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