Last spring, after publishing her first book, Vietnamese American author, playwright, and performer Susan Lieu went on a 30-stop national tour culminating in an event with the Vietnam Society at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Along the way, Lieu garnered reviews and praise from media outlets including the New York Times, NPR, Kirkus Review, and Publishers Weekly. Her book, The Manicurist’s Daughter: A Memoir (Macmillan Publishers), tells the poignant story of her parents immigrating to the Bay Area from Vietnam — and the struggle she and her siblings faced after their mother, Jennifer Ha (Hà Thúy Phuong), died from plastic surgery malpractice.

Returning home from the book tour, Lieu — who is a co-host of the Model Minority Moms podcast, the writer behind two theatrical solo shows (140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother and OVER 140 LBS: The Sequel), and a guest host on the Seattle kids’ TV show Look, Listen + Learn — threw herself into attending virtual book clubs (nearly 40 total) in an attempt to grow a grassroots network against a publishing industry that tends to favor established authors or celebrities for extensive marketing campaigns.

“The ongoing question I had was, ‘What is enough?’” Lieu admits. “I was constantly asking, ‘Am I going to be on a bestseller list, are people going to show up on the tour?’ It all goes back to the refugee hustle and manifesting your destiny.”

“The essence of all my suffering is believing that my worthiness is going to come through achievement,” Lieu says. “But what if I can flip that narrative? Can I be so bold today to rewrite these rules for myself?”

It’s a theme in The Manicurist’s Daughter, in which Lieu, the youngest of four siblings, spends years striving for answers surrounding her mother’s death (her family refused to ever talk about it), often using accomplishment (she has degrees from both Harvard and Yale) as a means to prove her worth. “The essence of all my suffering is believing that my worthiness is going  to come through achievement,” Lieu says. “But what if I can flip that narrative? Can I be so bold today to rewrite these rules for myself?”

In the months since returning home, Lieu has refocused, asking herself what she would do if she only had a few years, weeks, or months left to live — a reframing that has encouraged her to reach for things she’s been scared to pursue (or re-pursue) in the past, such as stand-up comedy, which she plans to reengage with this year.

In 2024, Lieu raised more than $50,000 to provide 1,640 copies of her book to immigrants and children of immigrants around the country. “I wrote this book for 11-year-old Susan,” she says. “She needed this book badly throughout adolescence.” Through her engaging prose — sometimes funny, sometimes haunting, sometimes enough to make the reader cry — Lieu provides a touchstone for anyone trying to find themselves, using family, motherhood, career, and the pursuit of a passion as a guide to healing trauma and learning the gracious act of self-love.