Owner of a lonely heart : a memoir / Beth Nguyen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nguyen, Beth, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nguyen, Beth.

Immigrants--Michigan--Biography.

Immigrants.

Vietnamese Americans--Michigan--Biography.

Vietnamese Americans.

Mothers and daughters--United States.

Mothers and daughters.

Refugees--Biography.

Refugees.

Parenthood.

Michigan.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

ix, 237 pages ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Scribner, 2023.

Summary:

"From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha's Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fragmented by war and resettlement. 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"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Twenty-four hours

Apparent, part I

Date of birth

The photograph

Apparent, part II

Apparent, part III

My mothers

White mothers

The story of my name

Apparent, revisited.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Keyes Fund bookplate.

Other Format:

Online version:

Nguyen, Beth. Owner of a lonely heart.

Online version: Nguyen, Beth. Owner of a lonely heart.

ISBN:

9781982196349

1982196343

9781982196356

1982196351

OCLC:

1375657925