So disturbing and so poignant. This memoir of a Vietnamese refugee who arrived in New York as a three year old tells an excruciating story of a family struggling in poverty, living in an unheated apartment, and often experiencing hunger. Ly and her three older brothers attend school but then spend their evenings helping their parents produce clothing in an appalling home-based sweatshop operation. The father, a political prisoner for ten years, not infrequently lashes out at his family members which makes for additional difficulties. This story while not likely unique reveals an world of hardship and also achievement in a family sponsored to come to the United States, and then largely abandoned to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in a foreign country that makes that an onerous process. Ly Tran generously shares her childhood years with her readers in this heartfelt memoir.
