Author Susan Lieu, a playwright and theater actor, was born into a family of nail workers, and once had a one-man theater program with narrative content “140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother” in 10 cities. throughout the United States, highly appreciated by many newspapers such as The Los Angeles Times, NPR, and American Theater magazine.
This drama program received many awards, and was also shown at many cultural programs, including Viet Film Fest in Little Saigon, and she was invited to lecture at dozens of universities across the country.
To spread the story of her mother’s death and her family’s story, Susan decided to write her first book, “The Manicurist’s Daughter.” This book is an emotional memoir that tells the story of a daughter from a Vietnamese refugee family searching for answers about her mother’s death due to cosmetic surgery.
Her family came to the United States in the 1980s after five unsuccessful attempts to cross the border. When she came to the United States, her mother was the leader of the family, opening two successful nail salons and the person behind all the family’s successes. When she was 11 years old, she decided to have cosmetic surgery to tighten her tummy, but then the surgery failed, and she died after a few days in a coma. After the funeral, no one in the family was allowed to talk about their mother or what had happened.
For the next 20 years, Susan decided to find the answer herself, wanting to know why the most perfect person in the family wanted to modify her body, and why no one told her mother about her life in Vietnam. Star.
Another answer she wants to know is why the doctor who killed her mother is still practicing and continues to target the Vietnamese community. Through much pain, many difficulties, and even through spiritual problems, she discovered many things about her mother, herself, and the ideal beauty that almost no one else has.
That is the content of “The Manicurist’s Daughter” that Ms. Susan Lieu wants to present to readers in Little Saigon, Orange County.
The book launch is a conversation between the author and the host, Ms. Elizabeth Ai, director and producer of the documentary “NEW WAVE,” about Vietnamese American culture in the 1980s. , as well as dialogue with attendees.
She opened the conversation by recounting her mother’s death when she was 11 years old in 1996, and how she passed away at only 38 years old after losing oxygen in her brain two hours after being in the operating room, then was in a coma for five days and then passed away. She said she later learned that the doctor who operated on her mother at that time had his license suspended, did not have medical malpractice insurance, was sued 19 times, but still advertised in the Vietnamese community in the San Bay area. Francisco.
For 20 years, her family never mentioned her mother, although she was always considered the North Star of the family. That made her want to face many taboos in her family, as well as in the Vietnamese community, and think that her mother really was no longer in this world if no one mentioned her.
She said she had to find every way to overcome the pain, even joining a Korean yoga sect, then decided to face her past with the one-man show “140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother” to tell the family’s story, then learned that the thousands of viewers who came to watch all had pain they hid in their hearts.
Author Susan Lieu also talked about many arguments with her family over the past 20 years about her mother’s death, recounting how she tried to please her family through education because she graduated from two prestigious universities, Harvard University and Yale. University. She also talked about the unbelievable things that happened on the wedding day, from the unpredictable weather changes to spiritual events in the family such as fortune-telling and séances.
She said she gave birth on March 30, 2020, when the United States was shutting down everything because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and could no longer make money by acting, but then luckily got a book contract. and in recent years, she has put a lot of effort into writing “The Manicurist’s Daughter.”
In addition to finding answers for herself, Susan said this book is also a way to heal generations, sharing many stories with each other to help the next generation have a better life.