REVIEW: 'House of Sticks,' by Ly Tran

NONFICTION: In this powerful memoir, Ly Tran explores the realities of being a new immigrant in America.

By Kao Kalia Yang

For the Minnesota Star Tribune
June 26, 2021 at 10:57AM
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Ly Tran photo by Joseph Vidal (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

In "House of Sticks," Ly Tran delves deep into her reservoir of memories to unravel the traumatic realities of what it means to be new and poor in America. Survivors of the Vietnam War, Tran's parents left their rural life behind with their four young children to settle in Queens in New York. Amid the tall apartments and bustling streets, the family struggles to earn a living by sewing ties and cummerbunds in one of the two bedrooms they share.

In the family's living room, Tran's parents set up an altar to teach their children to honor the tenets of Buddhism through daily rituals and chants. At school, classmates and teachers don't know the particular truths that govern the lives of the Tran family but each member persists as best they can.

Tran leads us through this coming of age story with incredible details that showcase an immigrant perspective filled with heartache and hopefulness.

This book is a testament to the strength of America's immigrant families and the forces that have governed American ideas of assimilation. A family must stand together to survive. The moment the standing is no longer necessary, a family must move apart to thrive.

As the years and distance grow, Tran finds what is so common in the American experience enveloping her family: the reality of an aging unit, moving farther apart, to pursue their individual dreams of economic and social mobility. This book continues and updates our understanding of how America welcomes its newest members and how these individuals fortify the structure of this nation.

Tran's language is concise throughout and the narrative is easy to follow. The story progresses in short chapters that burst with energy. The book moves fast, though the story it tells is slow. In this way, the contradictory forces at play mimic what so many poor families across this country experience: the long wait for a better future.

"House of Sticks" is Tran's debut work. It offers perspective and insight into a situation that remains sadly underrepresented in the genre; the book's center is a young Vietnamese American woman and her journey to understanding the family's past and its hold over her present. It showcases the tremendous power we have to alter the fates of others, step into their lives and shift the odds in favor of greater opportunity for our poor and weary.

Kao Kalia Yang is the author of the memoirs "The Latehomecomer," "The Song Poet" and "Somewhere in the Unknown World." She lives in St. Paul.

House of Sticks

By: Ly Tran.

Publisher: Scribner, 368 pages, $27.

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House of Sticks by Ly Tran (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
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Queens’ Elmhurst Avenue subway station. iStock (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
about the writer

about the writer

Kao Kalia Yang