A heartbreaking, poignant, yet hopeful coming-of-age memoir. The author emigrated from Vietnam to the US, as a very young child, with her parents and 3 older brothers. They arrived in the early 1990s with little support, no extended family and lived in poverty in Queens. Turning their small, sparsely furnished apartment into a mini sweatshop, the family made a bit of money sewing ties and other accessories. Her father, having survived ten years in a Vietnamese prison camp, was a difficult presence for everyone and had high expectations for his children to pursue education and make something of themselves. Her mother was a mix of obedient wife and determined business-women. In a very straightforward style, the author tells a story of complicated emotions and conflicts, of moving forward into a new culture, and a journey to adulthood that included very bleak periods of depression. I found it hard to put this book down, it’s a life I’ve never experienced and couldn’t have imagined. I so appreciate Ly for sharing her story with the world. Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a review copy.

This is a gorgeous, evocative, poignant memoir. Tran and her family emigrated from Vietnam in 1993. Life in the US was not easy, not at all. The whole family, including Tran, first sewing piecemeal and the in other jobs. Most notable for Tran was her time as a manicurist. At the same time, she was struggling to achieve in school without glasses. She struggles as well with the divide that begins to grow within the family as their ability to navigate in English and in US culture. Her academic achievements were both hard won and terrific. It's hard to review memoirs because it feels as though you are commenting on the author's life or life choices. That's not the case here. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. An excellent read.

House of Sticks: A Memoir tells of the immigrant experience of Ly Tran, a young Vietnamese girl, from the time she arrived in the US with her family at the age of three until she graduates from college at the age of 24. Her father dominates the family and his attitudes and beliefs prevent her from realizing her full potential. However, she gradually finds her voice, enabling her to stand up for herself and tell her story. Her writing style is at times sparse and her storytelling detached, losing some of the emotional impact that her narrative might otherwise reveal. Nonetheless, it is a moving memoir detailing the contrast between her need to honor her parents versus her desire to assimilate with her friends and classmates.

What a brilliant writer! I felt like was alongside Ly during her journey. I could feel her fathers desperation, after being held hostage for 10 years., ending up with a severe case of PTSD. Simply heartbreaking! I would definitelky recommend this book to any lover of memoirs and quite frankly, have already done so :)

"House of Sticks" by Ly Tran is a memoir of the author's life as Vietnamese immigrant to New York City who must navigate the conflict of wanting to form her own life and independence and her parents' fervent desire to keep her close to home, both physically and emotionally. Ly constantly worries and feels extreme guilt that her will to succeed in school, maintain her health, and establish her own path will never be what her parents expect or want from her. She feels this through both her parents's actions and the general responsibilities of being a child of immigrant parents who have a hard time footing their footing in New York. For me, one of the biggest representations of this struggle is Tran's eyesight and her father's refusal to get her glasses, even when social services visits her house. Tran can't see and struggles in school as a result thereof, but she also resists using other possible avenues of obtaining glasses on her own and facing her father's predictable wrath. This book also dives into Tran's worsening depression and the subsequent academic and social consequences, which she hides from her family, This book was so good that I read it all in a day.

House of Sticks by Ly Tran
My mom came to the United States as a 20 year old, mother of two. She left behind everyone she knew and moved to the middle of the country to live with her husband, who she barely knew. She grew up in Cần Thơ, along the Mekong Delta.

Ly Tran came to the US as a small child. She spent time in Thailand prior to arriving, but her earliest memories are of eggs and soy sauce. Then…the cold streets of Ridgewood, Brooklyn.

Along with her three brothers and both of her parents, Ly struggles to adapt to America. Working as a family for a sweatshop - making ties and cummerbunds, the Tran family adapts and grows. Ly, as the only daughter, is held up to a different standard than her brothers. She’s encouraged NOT to take the specialized tests for advanced high school placement. She’s not expected to go to college. She’s expected to work alongside her mother at the family owned nail salon. Ly, instead, finds people who believe in her and encourage her to use her talents.

That’s the short summary.

Now, here’s what I talk about what this book meant to me.

My mom worked endlessly once she arrived in America. She was a waitress (where she met my father), a seamstress sewing the W on the pockets of Wrangler blue jeans, a child care worker at a local day care, and as a nurse. She raised five daughters and a few grand kids. She also worked for almost 20 years to bring her family to the US. In 1993, my grandma, 2 uncles, 3 aunts and 2 cousins arrived in the cold winter. We stayed up late, screaming and laughing, eating on the floor of our recently converted garage. My cousins got up the next day and went to school with my younger sister.

Ly’s struggles with the school system and living between two worlds connected with me in ways that I had pushed down. I was an American by birth, but half of me is Vietnamese. I was raised VERY American, but I do have very Vietnamese habits….eggs and soy sauce being a huge one.

Reading about someone struggling to please her parents, but also realizing that there are other things in life to focus on. Her struggle with mental health is so familiar. The pushing it down, the seeing it as a weakness…100% the same.

Ly Tran is a magnificent writer and her openness and honesty in this memoir is something so rare. Immigrant stories are so important to the fabric of America and as part of literature. I expect great things from Ly and can’t wait to read what she has next.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book. Thank you Ly Tran for writing this. Let’s get some pho sometime.

This is an excellent autobiography/memoir. It held my interest from beginning to end. I found myself continuing to read after I planned to stop and wanting to finish "just one more chapter" before going to bed. That does not happen very often. I really enjoyed the author's writing style. She is entertaining and relatable. I would definitely read her work again.
This is the story of a young woman who grew up in NYC in a Vietnamese immigrant family. I sympathized with every person in this story. While the children had an impoverished youth, they worked hard and elevated themselves. The older brothers helped the author, their little sister, to get through college when she had difficulties. I am left wondering why they did not help their parents. I felt especially sorry for the parents. They seemed unlikely to rise above their circumstances no matter how hard they worked or how much they sacrificed. However, it seems the father began to heal, at least to some extent, by end of the timeline.
The author apparently wrote/published this memoir at least a few years after the conclusion of the events she described in her story. I would have liked to know more about how her parents are doing. I hope they are at least in a more comfortable living situation.
Every spoiled, entitled "first world" young person should read this book.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

House Of Sticks is a mesmerizing memoir. Tran is very honest and wrote a thorough reflation of most of her life. She and her family moved from Vietnam to the US in the early 1990s. She recounts the struggles of her family and her own issues. I was appalled that she was basically blind for over a decade because her parents refused to believe she needed glasses. She finally gets LASIK surgery and I cringed at her description of the procedure. I have worn contacts for over 35 years and wouldn’t trust anyone to laser my eyeballs. Tran floundered when she got to college but persevered. She worked through a lot of issues and is a testament to sticking it out and accomplishing her goals.

This timely title would appeal on the basis of plot alone. But Lily's story is compelling and will be popular with many types of readers.

As someone who had many similar experiences to Ly, this book was both painful and joyful to read through. She tells the story of her life, starting from when her parents and 3 older brothers moved from Vietnam to New York City. Starting with almost nothing as first generation immigrants, she details the following years as they struggle to survive and grow in a foreign country.

There were some moments and memories that I cried over; the story of how her father brought home donuts, telling his family that they were from work, until the family discovered that begged for leftovers at the nearby Dunkin Donuts instead. The injustice and mistreatment that Ly and her mother face when they begin to work at a nail salon, especially given her mother's language barriers and inability to stand up for herself. The perpetual worry about money and making ends meet. Layered into this struggle, though, she lays bare the many shadows in her family - her father's longstanding PTSD after being a prisoner of war, the abuse her mother has to withstand, and her own struggles with mental illness and depression. Obstacle after obstacle is thrown into her life, and there's no way not to be in awe of her struggles and her triumphs.

I will note that for me, I found the author's writing style and voice distant and unemotional throughout the novel. Because of this, there were some situations that I found it difficult to fully understand or empathize with her. She describes how she acted and behaved when struggling with depression, but because of how detached her tone was, it was difficult for me to fully grasp her mindset and perspective during this time.

Nonetheless, this is an eye-opening piece of writing that I hope many, many others will read. Not only does it highlight the challenges so many first generation immigrants, especially of Asian descent face, but also iterates the strength of family, even if they aren't perfect.

While I very much enjoyed this book, it would not be one I would purchase this year. I have put it on the list to consider for next year.

House of sticks was a book that drew me into Ly Tran and her families world.Immigrating here from Vietnam knowing hardly any English.They settle in Queens and everyday is a struggle to survive to put food on the table..Following the struggles of Ly and her family trying to survive to find work is an eye opening look at an immigrants kife.The family has many issues to overcome including mental health issues and Alyssa problems with her eyesight.Itbis amazing and wonderful to see how the family finds its way.All three kids are bright and successful.Lys path wasn’t easy but due to hard work she is accepted in an Ivy League school.IA really excellent read full of human emotion. #netgalley#scribner

Thank you to Scribner for providing an ARC of House of Stick's by Ly Tran

Ly Tran's House of Sticks is a poignantly written memoir of her experiences growing up as first generation Vietnamese immigrant in Brooklyn, New York.

Tran writes about many of the difficulties that new Americans face in their first decades in the US. Tran, her parents and her three brothers faced language, cultural, and economic barriers in their quest for a safer and more prosperous life. These barriers, of course, present themselves in the stories of many immigrants but one of the features that makes Tran's memoir unique is it's frank treatment of the way issues of mental and emotional health can hinder even the smartest and most ambitious person's quest for the American Dream. Tran and her family must deal with her father's PTSD after his experiences a Vietnam War veteran and former Vietkong prisoner of war. From violent mood swings to a refusal to allow Tran a pair of eyeglasses, there is not an aspect of Tran's childhood that is left untouched by this disease. In adolescence, Tran herself suffers from a deep depression that leads to her leaving college for a time. Yet despite this hurdle Tran finds a group of individuals who are willing to support her and who refuse to let her immense potential fall by the way side. One of the most beautiful aspects of this work is the fact that Tran is able to find hope and light after being immersed for so long in the darkness of depression.

Another one of the strengths of this memoir is the fact that Tran is ability to portray all the members of her family with such humanity, grace, and kindness. Her father is not a villain for allowing her to go without glasses for so long. He is a man whose experiences have led him to fear institutions and the control they could possible exert on him and his children. While certainly not a point of view I would take, part of the beauty of Tran's work is that she makes his actions and beliefs systems at least somewhat intelligible to the audience. Towards the end of the memoir Tran cites how a former English teacher described her as student who could "was able to see the humanity in any (literary) character, even those considered bad, mean, or just plain reprehensible." This memoir is certainly a testament to that gift.

The only real critique of the book that I had was that I would've liked to hear a bit more about her emotional journal as she emerged from her depression and went on to academic and personal success at Columbia. Overall this was a beautiful memoir. As a teacher, I would have no issue assigning House of Sticks to my high school aged students.

I loved this book and ended up reading it in one sitting because I simply couldn't put it done. Though I loved the book, some parts--maybe most parts--of this book are horrifyingly sad. The poverty, the ignorance, the struggles with mental health are all themes of this book. Yet, overall it is a story of immigrants prevailing and succeeding in many ways.
This book also sheds light on the Chinese Vietnamese culture and is an important read for anyone who works with immigrant children of any culture. Seeing how the children of immigrants are caught between their parents and their new world is eye-opening. I hope we will read more from Ly Tran.

All in all this was a really good book. I think it was generally well told and the story and timeline mostly flow well together. I like the details about her Buddhist faith and her parents struggle to make ends meet. There are a few issues that didn't make a lot of sense to me though. For example, her only applying to very expensive and very challenging colleges. I couldn't figure out why after flunking out of a lesser known honors program she didn't want to spend some time at say, a community college or a state school near her brothers, but instead goes right for Columbia, NYU, Drexel, etc. Also a main point of the book is her father's issues with her poor eyesight but then he makes a huge turn around for LASIK. Also her parents will pay for LASIK but not her college? She talks a lot about her goals for premed, biology, and psychology courses and then comes out of Columbia with a degree that is harder than most to capitalize on. Which, I suppose is good otherwise we wouldn't have this book but the transition is not really mentioned so it seems like a real 180. It was a good read with some minor flaws.

Ly Tran and her family arrived in the U.S. from Vietnam when she was very young. Her mother, father, and three brothers lived together in Queens, New York, where they found work sewing ties and cummerbunds. As children, she and her brothers worked alongside their parents in sweatshop conditions trying to survive. Later on, her parents bought a nail salon, where Ly also worked alongside her mother. Her early life was marked by poverty, hunger, and hard work.

Ly's father was somewhat tyrannical, but Ly always obeyed him, even going without much-needed glasses for half of her life simply because her father thought eyeglasses were part of a government conspiracy and refused to allow Ly to get them. Ly's brothers moved away and created separate lives from their family. Ly watched as they excelled in school and work. She also did well academically, but high-functioning depression took hold of her causing her to fail in her first college attempts until she was accepted to Columbia. While there, and with the help of various friends, Ly eventually gained self-confidence and self-worth.

House of Sticks is a raw and honest look at what life is like for a refugee family that relocates to the U.S. Ly gives readers an even closer look at her own life as a refugee Vietnamese girl living with traditional parents who continue to abide by their own cultural rules, customs and values, while living outside of their home country.