This compelling and honest memoir was both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Ly and her family emigrated to the United States in the early 1990s. Once here, they lived well below the poverty line and struggled and scratched out a life. Ly’s father was imprisoned in a ‘re-education’ camp, in Vietnam for over ten years and those emotional scars and ptsd resonated through their family life. The biggest fall out was her father’s refusal for believing that Ly needed glasses from the third grade on. Reading about Ly’s deteriorating eye sight even she excelled at school, was really stressful as well as her navigation of school as she got older. There is a fair amount of introspection as Ly tries to understand her parents and about mental health issues. She’s generous and not quite forgiving, but understanding that their past, effects her future.