Owner of a Lonely Heart

A Memoir

By: Beth Nguyen

Narrated by: Beth Nguyen

Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily • Selected by Time, NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book of 2023

“This book…is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by war and resettlement.

At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only 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 portrait of things left unsaid” (The New York Times), 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, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an “unforgettable” (People) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthood.

Perspective

This is a beautifully written book, mind expanding book. Its perspective makes you think. I have tremendous respect for the author.

Trauma of war

Memoires of regular citizens with a story to recount is a fascinating genre. I found it very, very interesting especially since I have visited Vietnam recently and I am a mother of 3. I have recommended it to many and am asking my family to read it because we all traveled to Vietnam together. To hear a Vietnamese refugee’s side of the story was very interesting. Highly recommend it.

Hard listen

It’s so difficult to listen to her staccato delivery. I found myself just not caring about her life story, which is not what I was hoping for when I purchased the book. After trying over and over to get into the story, I’ve given up.

Disappointing

I was looking forward to this memoir after reading Stealing Buddha's dinner last year, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, after Nguyen declared that her white boyfriend's mother's gift to her of a canvas bag with Nguyen's initials embroidered on it was an act of assimilation, I could not continue listening. It was not the first remark of this nature. It seems a lot of the internalized racism, and even blatant racism she experienced is being projected onto the actions of people who were kind and welcoming to Nguyen.

Huge pity party for the author

I listened almost to the end, and then I couldn't take it anymore. I kept waiting for the sun to come out, but the author seems to want to complain, complain, complain and we are all to take it in. So let's put aside that she and her family were saved by certain death from the U.S. Military. Then they got her to Michigan, where loving American Christians provided she and her family with a home and food and clothes for a year. Then she got a college education and has excelled as an author. Oh, but they pronounced her name, Bich, as Beesh or Bitch, instead of Bic, like the lighter. She was SOOO very damaged by this! And then her boyfriend's family paid for her train ticket to Chicago, where they put her up in a first-class hotel, took her to a five-star restaurant for dinner and then to the play Ms. Saigon. She could not stop crying because the Asian female in the play is a sex worker. Well, uh, wait a second. Hasn't there been all sorts of white women, from all nations, portrayed as sex workers; black, brown women portrayed in film and theater as sex workers? The author is having one big crying session for herself. She centers around the null relationship with her mother, which I am surprised she hasn't blamed on Americans and labeled as racist. But this story is really about "poor, poor me," instead of what it should be, thank you to America for this wonderful life I have, which could have been taken from me at one year old. Shame on you, ma'am. Please be thankful for the many, many, many gifts you have been given. And please don't listen to this.