About five years ago, I watched Susan Lieu perform her one-woman show, 140LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother as part of the Center for Asian American Media’s CAAMFest in San Francisco. The show captured Susan’s journey as she tried to piece together portraits of her mother in search of answers to about 100 questions she had, a reasonable amount for any child who unexpectedly lost their mother at 11. I left the show emotionally shattered and distraught, deeply feeling the pain and grief that Susan lay bare on stage.
I thought this book might be an expanded version of her solo performance and I wasn’t ready to add anymore grief or darkness into my world. But within the first pages of the book, even though we were thrusted into the hospital floor with Susan in excruciating pain, I laughed.
Despite the heaviness that comes with a book about loss and trauma, the author skillfully peppers the narrative with moments of humor. This delicate balance between solemnity and levity not only explores the depths of pain but also challenges readers to question their own reaction. “Should I be laughing right now?” I often wondered to myself. At times, the memoir read like a stand-up bit, with snippy set-ups punctuated by a hilarious punchline, like how after finding out that the doctor responsible for her mom’s death, the one she was hoping to sue and defame, was already dead, she decided to distract herself… by getting married. Not only that, she was, as she said, marrying up, “because he was Korean – the gold standard for Asian hotness.”
Sometimes the humor comes from her painfully self-aware reflections and critique of her own misguided journey. While she searches for answers about her mother, we witness the author’s own search for belonging and unconditional love in unexpected ways. We follow her into a cult where she knowingly succumbs to the cult’s predatory practices because she “felt more love from them than [her] own family,” her journey to Viet Nam which she called her “all-in-one solution to deal with all [her] baggage,” and visits to two psychics who bring her emotional reprieve and reassurance to become an artist.
There is a lot happening in this memoir. There are spirit channelers, ruthless body shaming, ice climbing, and enough food descriptions to make you feel either hungry or bloated. The memoir is broken into six parts, with stories stitched together that jump across timelines and geographies. At times, the weaved stories can feel messy and chaotic, but also satisfyingly Vietnamese, like an oral story being passed down through generations. Linear storytelling would have felt too colorless for a complicated family history filled with spirits and secrets.
While I had left Susan’s show five years back with a sense of existential urgency, this book left me with a sense of hope and reprieve. As I followed her journey to heal from the loss of her mom and all the grief that ensued, I too felt like a piece of myself was healing. At the end of the memoir, Susan ends by stating, “I am the manicurists’ daughter and this is just the beginning.” The pluralization of the title “The Manicurist’s Daughter” in this final line positions herself not just as her mother’s but also her father’s daughter, and is a testament to the cheeky and punchy wordplay scattered all throughout this introspective and darkly humorous memoir.
The Manicurist’s Daughter
by Susan Lieu
Celadon Books, $30.00
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Vina Vo is a storyteller and facilitator who aims to bridge the cultural, generational, and geographic divide caused by displacement and diaspora. Vina co-leads and directs a writing program called this is my body to support women of color to write and perform their own solo performance. She is the co-editor for the anthology of this is my body published by Nomadic Press in 2019. She is working on her first novel. She is the co-founder of the Novalia Collective and Creo Tea & Coffee.
