The Manicurist's Daughter Review

The Manicurist’s Daughter came into my life at the perfect time. I had just come home from traveling overseas for a week, and being there for my family as we navigated some health issues my grandpa is going through. He helped raise me in a lot of ways, I will always be “baby” to him, the nickname he still calls me at times, albeit less frequently. I am still unable to completely articulate the grief I felt into words, the frustration and pain and acceptance or lack thereof is something that I know has changed who I am and how I experience life. It was almost difficult for me to believe that the pain I was feeling is universal, that everyone must come face to face with health issues, death, suffering of loved ones or oneself at one point or another in their life. I suppose experiencing heartbreak is similar, it is unimaginable how you navigated life before. It’s not exactly regret (i.e. “I wish I never had to feel this way”), but almost a more nuanced understanding of the world, our parents, people you see on the street. It is threaded with so much aching, your chest throbs and smarts, then slowly, bit by bit, lessens. Does it ever go away? The Manicurist’s Daughter was waiting for me on my doorstep (thank you Celadon Books for the gifted copy) when I lugged my suitcase into the house after a particularly grueling red eye flight. I immediately started it that night and couldn’t put it down. 

A huge theme in this book that I found hugely significant to me personally is miscommunication in immigrant families. She discusses how her siblings talk to her, her father, family members, and how they are quite harsh towards her when she tries to ask about her mother. She relates that she often feels like the black sheep, constantly faced with comments after crying such as “wash your face” or “stop being so emotional.” The combination of the cultural differences and language barriers together can tend to create rifts in immigrant households. East Asian families (in my personal experience) have a tendency and strong culture of valuing privacy and sweeping negative things under the rug, as well as simply ignoring difficult or confrontational topics. Much of the older generation in Asian American families, especially those who have immigrated, have a difficulty expressing oneself in words, especially English. This doesn't create a particularly open environment for emotional conversations, which are essential in healing from the traumas that haunt families or individuals who have to live with the memories or in Lieu’s experience, the reality of her mother’s death. In fact, the following events of the tragedy can even be interpreted as almost more traumatic than the actual event. The rebuking from her family who are typically supposed to be the support system, comments about emotionality, i.e. “stop seeking attention.” It made me think of my own experiences of wiping tears away and tamping down my own feelings after a conversation that didn’t go the way I expected with older figures who the younger children or family members are supposed to concede to without a thought. I admired how Lieu challenges this and the many other expectations put onto first and even subsequent generations of Asian Americans. She chooses art and performing over the typical corporate desk job that provides financial and job security, something that much of the immigrant generation didn’t have and therefore desired for their children to have and value. Despite this choice to pursue art and eventually writing, creating conflict in her marriage and financial strain, Lieu digs deep into the history of her family and ultimately, her mother’s life despite her family’s pleas to “let it go.” Ironically enough, they say this despite their own inability to let it go, which is later discussed when a few of her siblings allow for a live interview in front of Lieu’s audience after her show. How is time supposed to heal her, when the most basic questions about the most tragic event of young Lieu's life aren’t answered, when the most important figure in her life is gone without any resolution? It is intriguing how her family only consents to an open discussion about the topic in front of a large audience, after Lieu’s widespread success in performing her show about her experience with her mother’s death. 

The frustrations Lieu has with her own body are also so important and central in this memoir. It is after all, the reason her mother passed: malpractice by an uninsured white male plastic surgeon in San Francisco. Even after this tragedy, her family still continues to poke and prod her about her body, which just goes to show how deep the beauty standards in Asia, and Vietnamese culture in her case, goes. Shifting between wanting to keep the peace or please her family forms a tension with her determination to not be valued by how thin or acceptable she is to Vietnamese beauty standards. 

Something else I really enjoyed was the few glimpses we had at Lieu’s marriage and personal relationships and immediate family as well, especially near the end. Her relationship with her father is also something that felt very satisfying to read about, because she reshapes her relationship and perception of her father who she held a lot of frustration and resentment towards. She admits that grief warped her memories of her father and his support of her, which was also so relevant and so very aware. I really love nonfiction that delves deep and plays with the idea of memories. How tenuous they are, how they can shift and warp and change in an instant, after what feels like an eternity of feeling a specific resoluteness of “this is exactly what happened.” Sometimes it only takes what feels like a split second to completely change your world view and understanding of what took place all those years ago, but in reality, it took weeks, months, decades, to heal after what has and what hasn’t happened. 

The end consists of her looking forward, and her future of her relationships with her husband and son. Time goes on after all. But she doesn’t leave her mother behind, or the fight to understand this essential aspect of her history: her family, her body, her mother’s body, and the events that led up to her mother’s death. She interweaves how this experience and journey impacts her future, she brings light to the way her mother’s death affects her own decisions to have children and the family she wants to create for herself, the fear and confusion she has, asking herself how she can bear children and become a mother when she doesn’t even understand her own mother. She discusses her marriage with her husband who is supportive, but it’s by no means a picture perfect relationship that one may see in a romance novel, but it’s real, it’s true, and perhaps love isn’t always going to be picture perfect, perhaps real love is what you see in real life, and what works for each situation and individual. 

Overall, this memoir was wonderful. I’m so grateful to Celadon Books and Susan Lieu for gifting me this review copy, and Lieu is such an inspiration to me now.