Mai Nguyễn’s debut novel is a love letter to Vietnamese-immigrant nail technicians everywhere. The stories in the salon are filled with drama, laughter, and love. Her writing is beautiful, especially when she plays around with Vietnamese proverbs, such as: “When you’re poor, money becomes thicker than blood.” It was a pleasure read.

My reading pace had been slow. A 250-page memoir should only take me a few days or a week to finish. Beth Nguyễn’s Owner of a Lonely Heart took me two weeks not because it wasn’t engaging, but because I was distracted with other projects and priorities. The last two days I was determined to focus on it and I just couldn’t put it down.

Ms. Nguyễn’s memoir is so real and relatable, in particular her story as an immigrant from Việt Nam. I love the story of her name. Like her, I changed my name from Doanh to Donny because I got tired of correcting people butchering it. In recent years, I have been wondering if I should change it back to show that I have not been Americanized. After reading Beth’s story, however, I’ll stay with it. It’s just a name, as she points out, “… it doesn’t change my past, my family, our lives as refugees in the United States.”

Ms. Nguyễn writes about the complicated relationship with her mothers as well as her relationship with her own kids. Even though she married a white guy, she still recognizes who she is. She writes:

All my life I have felt like an imposter daughter, an imposter Vietnamese, an imposter American, and often an imposter mother, failing and disappointing, an unreliable narrator. When does a refugee stop being a refugee? The answer is in the question itself, forever unanswerable.

I also appreciate her realness on motherhood. She confesses:

Here is a thing that I have never said or admitted because it sounds fucked up: every year my children get older feels like such a relief, not just because every year feels like a gain in their health and growth, but also because it feels like every extra year means they will be okay because they will be old enough, and getting older enough, to bear it if something terrible happens. One of the reasons early childhood, and thus early motherhood, is so terrifying is that we are always thinking about danger, worrying about safety and loss. What is worse, the fear of losing your children or the fear of your children losing you? And if your children lost you, would you live enough in their minds? What if they forget, and thus lose you?

This memoir speaks to me in various aspects and her prose is so damn good. I am so glad to see more and more Vietnamese-American writers making it. Whether fiction or nonfiction, I am seeking out Vietnamese-American authors to read.

In writing this brief review, I decided to leave out the diacritics on the author’s name because I can’t even guess his last name. Sure, his first name is Cường, but his last name could be Lư or Lữ. I couldn’t find any reference to his name. That said, let’s get to the book.

Cuong Lu who was a longtime student of Thích Nhật Hạnh is picking up where his teacher left off. He writes about Buddhist psychology with concise prose and clarity. Happiness Is Overrated is insightful and practical. What strikes me the most is how happiness and suffering are close to each other. The book itself is super short. It can be read in one sitting. If I have to choose one chapter from the book, it has to be chapter 5, which titled “True Wealth.” I am just going to quote the entire chapter here so I can refer back to later on. Cuong Lu:

We all want to be happy. We think happiness is the answer to every kind of suffering. Just be happy in the here and now, and everything will be fine. I wish life were that simple. But it isn’t. Your happiness, for example, can be the suffering of someone else. We need to see ourselves in others, too. If we don’t care about the suffering of others, that is not true happiness.

When we only think about ourselves, there are many things we can do to make ourselves happy. When we think about others, there are many things we can do to help them be happy. Sometimes, though, we need to choose. We only have one treat, and we have to choose. We can choose to eat it, or we can choose to give it to someone else. Sometimes we want to have it for ourselves, and yet we give. We’re not 100 percent happy, but at a deeper level you can’t overestimate the joy of giving and helping. Facing these choices is part of the journey to discovering the meaning of your life.

You are more than you think. Others are also you. When you respect others, you’re respecting yourself. When you love others, you are loving yourself. When you help others, you are helping yourself. But when you’re happy and others are suffering, your happiness is incomplete. When you’re rich and others are poor, something is wrong. We need to share. And we need to share our happiness with those who are suffering. Only by sharing can we be truly happy. Only by sharing can we be truly wealthy. There’s no way to be rich in spirit without giving and sharing.

The more you give, the richer you become. Sharing is an art. If you’re rich and don’t know how to share, you are still a poor person. If you are happy and don’t know how to make others happy, you are suffering. Taking care of yourself is not enough. You need to learn to take care of others. Happiness is not only in the here and now. Future generations are in us. We need to work for the happiness of future generations; then we’ll be happy.

In the Lotus Sutra, there is a story of two friends who met each other after many years apart. One had become rich, the other poor. After a dinner with a lot of alcohol, the poor friend fell soundly asleep, and the wealthy friend, before leaving, sewed a diamond inside the lining of his friend’s jacket. Many years later when they met again, the poor friend was still poor. He never realized that he had a gem inside his jacket.

This is not a story about wealth. The gem is a metaphor for your true self. You have a diamond in you. You don’t have to search for it; it’s already yours. Happiness and suffering are both yours, as is the wisdom of knowing how precious life is. With this wisdom, we know how to love one another and protect life.

Clark’s writing is concise and he keeps each chapter to several pages. Nevertheless, I could not finish the book. Maybe I am not the right audience for this type of book. He has good information on public writing. I am not a public writer. I am just a blogger.

This novel took me three weeks to finish. I was lost in two-third of the book. I couldn’t tell when the story took place in the past or the present and in reality or in a dream. The last 100 pages started to make some sense, but I was still uncleared. Although the storyline is blurry to me, Ms. Trần’s use of diacritical marks for Vietnamese was clear for me. I liked her food writing. The steamed duck with gingered fish sauce made my mouth watery. Mad props for including web design as part of the story.

Năm trước tôi định đọc quyển Truyện ngắn Lê Hà Ngân nhưng ngưng khi thấy sách quá nhiều lỗi. Không phải trong chính tả mà trong cách gõ chữ Việt. Chẳng hạn như chữ ơ thiếu dấu móc hoặc hai chữ gắn liền nhau. Giờ đọc lại thì thấy cách viết văn của Lê Hà Ngân hay. Những câu chuyện về tình cảm và xã hội ấn tượng. Trong “Một khoảng trời mây trắng”, tác giả đưa vào hai câu châm ngôn mà tôi chưa từng nghe qua: “Ừ lành thì làm gáo, vỡ thì làm muôi nhé!” và “Sông còn dò được khúc nông sâu mà lòng người không ai dò hết được”.

I enjoy Jones’s personal poems. I appreciate his openness on racism and same-sex experiences, but I find the connection with him on the grief for his mother. Reading “Saeed, How Dare You Make Your Mother into a Prelude” and “The Dead Dozens” makes me miss my mother so bad. I loved this collection.

Reporter James R. Hagerty has written more than 800 obituaries for the Wall Street Journal; therefore, he knows what it takes to write a life story. No one is better at telling your story than yourself and you can start writing right away. On this blog, I have a goodbye category, in which I write brief tributes to the people I had known. I also have a personal category, in which I write about my life. This blog is my obituary as well.

I read Timothy Goodman’s corny-ass love in Paris in one sitting. He’s right. The love is corny as fuck, but his prose saved the story. His writing is concise and lyrical. The art part is hard to read though. I skipped that.

Simone Stolzoff’s The Good Enough Job comes at the critical moment of my own career evaluation. I fell into the conventional wisdom of following my passion. I believed that if I worked hard at what I loved to do, I would become successful. I spent over 20 years of my career from a web designer fresh out of college to work my way up to become a design director. Now I am on the brink of losing everything. A director title doesn’t mean anything. I have come to accept that money, power, and privilege overrules passion. I am in the process of separating my identity from my job and my self-worth from my output. Fortunately, I am not alone and Stolzoff has the proof through his interviews with people who have burned out, become disillusioned, and find meaningless in what they do. It is an essential book for anyone who wants to reclaim their life from work.