
The Manicurist's Daughter
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Susan Lieu
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By:
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Susan Lieu
About this listen
Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2024
"Susan Lieu's narration of her memoir, The Manicurist's Daughter, adds to the already raw emotion that flows throughout her journey to know her mother."—The Berkshire Eagle
This program is read by the author.
An emotionally raw memoir about the crumbling of the American Dream and a daughter of refugees who searches for answers after her mother dies during plastic surgery.
Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers. About her family’s past and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother was their savvy, charismatic North Star, setting up two successful nail salons and orchestrating every success—until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. After the funeral, no one was ever allowed to talk about her or what had happened.
For the next twenty years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone—why did the most perfect person in her life want to change her body? Why would no one tell her about her mother’s life in Vietnam? And how did this surgeon, who preyed on Vietnamese immigrants, go on operating after her mother’s death? Sifting through depositions, tracking down the surgeon’s family, and enlisting the help of spirit channelers, Susan uncovers the painful truth of her mother, herself, and the impossible ideal of beauty.
The Manicurist’s Daughter is much more than a memoir about grief, trauma, and body image. It is a story of fierce determination, strength in shared culture, and finding your place in the world.
A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.
©2024 Susan Lieu (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A stunning, raw, brave memoir that wouldn’t let me go.”―V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of Reckoning and The Vagina Monologues
"With tenacity, wit, and fierce love, Susan Lieu reconstructs the mother she lost–from memory, through detective work, by spirit conjuring…defying all obstacles and naysayers. A high octane roller coaster to healing."―Thi Bui, author of The Best We Could Do, an American Book Award winner, a National Book Critics Circle finalist, and an Eisner Award finalist
"The quintessential story of an immigrant's kid―filled to the brim with heartache and hope."―Gene Luen Yang, author of American Born Chinese, a National Book Award finalist and Printz Award winner
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Male reader ruins the book
- By Shana Theobald on 06-01-23
By: Sumi Hahn
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Time Is a Mother
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 1 hr and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of personal and social loss, embodying the paradox of sitting in grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with the meaning of family and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, these poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
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The terrible narration
- By mariella smith-masters on 05-22-25
By: Ocean Vuong
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Here After
- A Memoir
- By: Amy Lin
- Narrated by: Amy Lin
- Length: 3 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. On a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy’s family. It’s the last time she sees her husband alive.
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Raw and real. Timeless.
- By MWaters on 04-27-25
By: Amy Lin
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Viewfinder
- A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen
- By: Jon M. Chu, Jeremy McCarter
- Narrated by: Jon M. Chu
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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With striking candor and unrivaled insights, Chu offers a firsthand account of the collision of Silicon Valley and Hollywood—what it’s been like to watch his old world shatter and reshape his new one. Ultimately, Viewfinder is about reckoning with your own story, becoming your most creative self, and finding a path all your own.
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Excellent story and incredible quality
- By Gosei on 09-17-24
By: Jon M. Chu, and others
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Great Heroes and Heroines of Hawaiian Heritage
- By: Leilani Basham, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Leilani Basham
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Original Recording
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In the six lectures of Great Heroes and Heroines of Hawaiian Heritage, you will meet some of the key figures of Hawaiian history from the 19th and 20th centuries, a tumultuous period in Hawaii’s transformation from a secluded group of independent islands to the 50th US state and a bustling tourist destination. With Leilani Basham of the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa as your guide, you’ll be introduced to the political leaders, scholars, activists, and artists who have been integral to Hawaii’s story and the preservation of Hawaiian culture.
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This great!
- By Amazon Customer on 05-15-25
By: Leilani Basham, and others
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Slow Noodles
- A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes
- By: Chantha Nguon
- Narrated by: Kim Green, Clara Kim
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen.
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Hauntingly beautiful, epic journey of resilience and human kindness
- By nameatrandom on 04-30-24
By: Chantha Nguon
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I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying
- A Memoir
- By: Youngmi Mayer
- Narrated by: Youngmi Mayer
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying, Youngmi jokes through the retelling of her childhood as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan, a place next to a place that Americans might know. She jokes through her difficult adolescence where she must parent her own parents: a mother who married her husband because he looked like white Jesus (and the singer of The Bee Gees). And with humor and irreverence and full-throated openness, she jokes even while sharing the story of what her family went through during the last century of colonialism and war in Korea.
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A must read for Korean Americans
- By J. Lee on 05-17-25
By: Youngmi Mayer
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Did I Ever Tell You?
- A Memoir
- By: Genevieve Kingston
- Narrated by: Genevieve Kingston
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Genevieve (Gwen) Kingston was just eleven years old when her mother passed away, leaving behind a chest filled with gifts and letters to celebrate the milestones of Gwen’s life and each of her birthdays until age thirty.
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Beautiful
- By Paloma M. Lee on 05-25-24
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Between Two Trailers
- A Memoir
- By: J. Dana Trent, Barbara Brown Taylor - foreword
- Narrated by: J. Dana Trent
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Dana Trent is only a preschooler the first time she uses a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King. While King struggles with his unmedicated psychosis, Dana’s mother, the Lady, a cold and self-absorbed woman whose personality disorders rule the home, guards large bricks of drugs from the safety of their squalid trailer. But when the Lady impulsively plucks Dana from the Midwest and moves the two of them south, their fresh start results in homelessness and bankruptcy.
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This book was everything and more
- By Jim Henning on 05-15-25
By: J. Dana Trent, and others
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Whiskey Tender
- A Memoir
- By: Deborah Taffa
- Narrated by: Charley Flyte
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories.
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Powerful & Informative
- By Brenda C. on 06-03-24
By: Deborah Taffa
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Accidentally on Purpose
- By: Kristen Kish
- Narrated by: Kristen Kish
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Accidentally on Purpose dives into Kristen Kish’s childhood as a Korean adoptee in the Midwest, finding purpose in kitchens, and becoming the season 10 winner of—and now host—of Top Chef all the while navigating life in the spotlight, coming out in her adult years, and all the life lessons in between.
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Enjoyable listen for fans…
- By NMwritergal on 04-23-25
By: Kristen Kish
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You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
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Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
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The Return of Ellie Black
- By: Emiko Jean
- Narrated by: Mizuo Peck, Tessa Albertson, Nicole Lewis, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work. Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State. But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers.
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BUCKLE UP!
- By Maryanne T. on 06-04-24
By: Emiko Jean
the energy she brings as the narrator is infectious, and demands your attention at every turn and new detail uncovered in her investigation of her mother's death, and trying to connect to her more deeply as her own journey into motherhood is on the horizon.
Worth every second of the recording, and it's a journey that will hopefully inspire reflecting on your own history as it has mine.
Raw, emotional, and superb storytelling
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#manicuristsdaughter @advancebeautycollege
I love the audiobook! Read by the author herself, she adds tone (all SIX tones and more)! I loved hearing her stories because it made me feel so much less alone. Being my mom’s first born as an American born Vietnamese, it was often difficult to grasp both cultures fully. To the Vietnamese, i was never Vietnamese enough… to the Americans, i wasnt American…my son is mixed and also struggles with not being this or that enough… we are not alone… and to have this book written in an easy going, comical but exposed / raw way… it is easy for me to listen to this w my son and say:
See? We all struggle together…in similar / different ways. How we work thru the struggle shapes who we are and strengthens our character. I am ME enough and you are the perfect amount of this AND that!
Bo qua di…vs tiem loi di
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What a beautiful reflection
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Finding oneself in the untold story
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unbelievable story told in a beautiful way
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So glad Lieu brought her family's story to light!
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Amazing memoir
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Incredible emotional journey
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Among the best!
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 Have you ever had a manicure and pedicure and wondered what the workers were saying in Vietnamese? This story is about immigrants coming to America and establishing a business so that their children could have a better life. When the mother suddenly dies the father and four children have to figure out how to move forward.
This story searches for the meaning of the loss of a mother but is told with all the truth and comedy including body image, judgy family, good food, career paths, four generations, culture, spirituality, community, opportunities and just life in general.
I listen to the audiobook and enjoyed the Vietnamese language and accents as read by the author….but missed the photos that are in the book.
Great work Susan!
An engaging and true story of a young girls journey into adulthood, discovering the truth about her mother’s death.
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