'House Of Sticks' Is An Immigrant Success Story With Filial Bonds At The Core
Ly Tran's memoir House of Sticks brings to mind both the story of The Three Little Pigs and the myth of the unassimilated other in Francois Truffaut's The Wild Child (L'Enfant Sauvage), in its unsentimental yet deeply moving examination of filial bond, displacement, war trauma, and poverty.
Ostensibly an immigrant success story, Tran's narrative power lies in its nuanced celebration of filial devotion that withstands the enormous cost of the American dream.
The book's first chapter, "Awake"— on the author's earliest memory of waking up in the arms of her mother in a refugee camp in. Tran's sensory cognizance of the blue tarpaulin tent cover, the pungent, creamy taste of eggs drenched in soy sauce that she shared with her family — these constitute the corporeal recollections that Tran would need to reclaim in the future as part of her essential education, to offset her family's survival mode that often rendered the body invisible.
