Like Viet Thanh Nguyen's acclaimed The Sympathizer, VietnamEazy
captures with startling honesty and detail the dizzying dislocation that
so many Vietnamese arrivals in the United States have experienced and,
like Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, explores the age-old mysteries of
the mother-daughter relationship. It tells the story of Kieu, a
Vietnamese-American woman, and her quest for success on a TV cooking
show, introducing the intoxicating allure of Vietnamese food to a
general audience, interwoven with the haunting, sorrowful tale of her
family and upbringing. This is a universal tale of redemption that
mothers and daughters can read together and discuss, preferably over a
steaming bowl of pho.