Owner of a Lonely Heart: A Memoir

Written by Beth Nguyen

Narrated by Beth Nguyen

Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily • Selected by Time, NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book of 2023

“This book…is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by war and resettlement.

At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only Beth’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together.

Owner of a Lonely Heart is “a portrait of things left unsaid” (The New York Times), a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an “unforgettable” (People) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Jul 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781797158815

Beth Nguyen

Beth Nguyen is the author of the recently published memoir Owner of a Lonely Heart, the memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, and two novels. Her work has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Essays. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Nonfiction in 2024 and teaches creative writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Reviews for Owner of a Lonely Heart

[amy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There’s a good story here, but it’s not in chronological order. The back and forth between timelines and stories is frustrating.

[Ellen Tate · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So sad that Beth felt so lonely. Many Americans have felt that way as being poor and and having to live different & without so many things that there piers had, also, of their home and environment around them.
Learn to be thankful for what you did have and were able to live through it and create a life you always desired and love being YOU. God loves you just the way you are. He created you that way. He will always love his creation. We have to love and accept ourselves and God.