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    Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
    Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
    Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
    Ebook383 pages5 hours

    Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In

    By Phuc Tran

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    For anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature.

    In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, and teenage rebellion, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations set by his immigrant parents.

    Appealing to fans of coming-of-age memoirs such as Fresh Off the Boat, Running with Scissors, or tales of assimilation like Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Displaced and The Refugees, Sigh, Gone explores one man’s bewildering experiences of abuse, racism, and tragedy and reveals redemption and connection in books and punk rock. Against the hairspray-and-synthesizer backdrop of the ‘80s, he finds solace and kinship in the wisdom of classic literature, and in the subculture of punk rock, he finds affirmation and echoes of his disaffection. In his journey for self-discovery Tran ultimately finds refuge and inspiration in the art that shapes—and ultimately saves—him.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 21, 2020
    ISBN9781250194725
    Author

    Phuc Tran

    Phuc Tran has been a high school Latin teacher for more than twenty years while also simultaneously establishing himself as a highly sought-after tattooer in the Northeast. Tran graduated Bard College in 1995 with a BA in Classics and received the Callanan Classics Prize. He taught Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in New York at the Collegiate School and was an instructor at Brooklyn College’s Summer Latin Institute. Most recently, he taught Latin, Greek, and German at the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine. His 2012 TEDx talk “Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive” was featured on NPR’s Ted Radio Hour. He has also been an occasional guest on Maine Public Radio, discussing grammar; the Classics; and Strunk and White’s legacy. He currently tattoos at and owns Tsunami Tattoo in Portland, Maine, where he lives with his family. Phuc is the author of the memoir, Sigh, Gone.

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    Reviews for Sigh, Gone

    4/5

    68 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      nonfiction/memoir - 1st generation Vietnamese-American (immigrated from Saigon in 1975 as a 2 y.o.) struggling to fit in by becoming a literature-nerdy geek/skater/punk/misfit in small-town Carlisle PASharp prose and scathing humor; a delightful read.
    • 5/5
      SIGH, GONE: A MISFIT’S MEMOIR OF GREAT BOOKS, PUNK ROCK, AND THE FIGHT TO FIT IN by Phuc Tran.This title is a selection of Maine Public’s ALL BOOKS CONSIDERED BOOK CLUB, to be discussed in May, 2022.“In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran and his family immigrated to America, landing in small-town Pennsylvania.”“In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, teenage rebellion, and assimilation, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations of his parents.” (book jacket)My reflections.I liked this book very much. It is so personal and so smart - everyone will recognize the challenges and angst and emotions and uncertainties of developing and maturing and discovering (or trying to discover) our own personality. (I only wish I was as smart as Phuc.)I liked the ‘combination words’ Phuc’s parents used.“My mother Vietnamesed at me.”“My father glared at Lou and me, sensing that nincompoopery was afoot.” (my favorite)I liked Phuc’s comments about ghosts (on page 86) Ghosts are “a crucial narrative element.”“Ghosts create meaning and impetus”“When ghosts show up in literature or film, they expedite or pivot the story.”I never thought of ghosts in that way. Phuc is extremely perceptive.I began sensing a distinct literary theme (around p. 92). Phuc seemed to think of literatureas life-defining after watching A CHRISTMAS CAROL on TV. “We live in the Past, the Present and the Future.” “The Past pulled us and the Future pushed us.The tension of tenses.” (One of my favorite sentences!)I like all of Phuc’s literary examples: the works of C. G. Jung, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MADAME BOVARY, Comics, porn magazines, THE HAPPY HOOKER, PYGMALION, Kafka’s METAMORPHOSIS, THE STRANGER, THE ILIAD, works by Oscar Wilde, Plato and Malcolm X.Phuc’s thoughts on authenticity - “What part of me was the real me and what was the facade?”I thoroughly enjoyed the writing in this book - the introspections, the emotions. I quite liked the Acknowledgements. They made me cry. *****
    • 5/5
      I was born in Carlisle in the late 1980s, when Phuc was a student at Carlisle Senior High School and my mother was a teacher at said high school. I spent the first few years of my life there before moving to another small, central Pennsylvania town, but Carlisle is my father’s hometown and his family never left. He returned to it’s picturesque countryside, his wood shop nestled in it’s run-down gridded streets, in the early aughts.

      A few times a year I drive the two hours from the Philadelphia suburbs back to the town of my childhood to see my dad, go to the dentist, have my car inspected, and stop by my favorite places in town – the diner, Scalles; the indie bookshop of my youth, Whistlestop Bookshop; and the Kline Center of Dickinson College where my mom played basketball as a co-ed and where I still get to use the pool, the same one she took me to as a small child.

      The town has changed a great deal in the last decade and a half since I got my driver’s license and could drive myself through it’s streets, visiting my dad and family, and it’s been nice to see it’s renaissance (there’s a brewery now!) and how it’s reinventing itself. Even though I spent my school years in Gettysburg (and desperately wanted out), I was still a Carlisle girl at heart and it brings joy to my heart to see the town diversify more and more, albeit at a snail’s pace. But despite my father’s requests, I was never moving back to central PA after college in Pittsburgh. The overwhelming desire to “get out” of small town central PA was essential to me, and to Phuc.

      We were supposed to host Phuc at the bookstore in early May and, unfortunately, that is no longer happening for obvious reasons. Shortly after I started reading my advance copy of Sigh, Gone, I emailed our rep telling her how much I was enjoying it (it’s my favorite memoir, tied with Lynsey Addario’s It’s What I Do) and what I needed to do to potentially secure a signed copy. Low and behold, next thing I knew I was putting together an author visit.

      There were many events that I was disappointed to have to cancel at the store, but this one hurt my heart the most. I love being able to find books that might not show up on everyone’s radar, and feature them at the store. It’s even better when I get to meet or host the author of said book that I admire. I love, even more, getting a different perspective on a town I know so well, but experienced so differently.

      I always love getting multiple perspectives on the same time in history, especially microhistories, in this case, Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the 1980s. Phuc was in high school and my parents in their twenties, not too far apart. But the Carlisle experience of my parents was very different than the Carlisle Phuc’s family experienced. I’m a middle class white girl who’s family was well known and well liked in town – both through my mother’s role in the school district and my father’s woodworking business. To be able to read Phuc’s memoir and visualize exactly where he was in Carlisle on each page but to find his experiences so different to mine growing up in small town PA just made me step back and ponder how people could be so cruel. To the everyday circumstances, I could overwhelmingly relate – from my mother having cancer when I was a child, to getting into my top choice college and not being able to go for financial reasons, I found solace in the Clash as a teenager and tried my hand a skateboarding, I thought Tony Hawk and the Dogtown boys were the ultimate rebellious athletes. I often thought I would have fit in just fine with Gen X.

      The Carlisle I knew growing up had problems, problems that I knew about as a kid and darker ones that I learned about as an adult. Like most other small towns in central Pennsylvania, racism is entrenched and pervasive (I still see countless confederate flags flying) and college is the only way out, other than the military. Most of the small towns are incredibly conservative and there is a oppressive patriarchy dictating what is socially acceptable.

      Despite the cruelties of life, family, and circumstance, Sigh, Gone is filled with great hope and spectacular writing. Arranged chronologically, each chapter covers roughly a year and is framed by the great work of classic literature for which the chapter is named. I flew through every page, getting more and more entrenched in my own unique reading experience (and searching for my mom’s name on every page while Phuc is in high school!).
    • 5/5
      This memoir should be given to every high school student (16+). Everyone should read this book and will find themselves in it, whether they are an immigrant or a person who has ever encountered an immigrant (i.e. everyone), whether they were cool or not in high school (Phuc managed to be both). It extolls the transformative magic of libraries and good teachers, explains systemic racism as something that is not just someone else's problem, illustrates how great literature applies to one's own life, models a healthy teen romantic relationship without shrinking from describing an unfortunate episode. Spoiler alert: best of all, kids (and all of us) need to see that you can be a dedicated punk with abusive parents and grow up to be a Latin teacher who is also a tattoo artist and a loving husband and father. What an amazing person and amazing book.
    • 4/5
      Phuc was only a toddler when his family was evacuated from Saigon in the final days before the city fell. Families in Carlisle, Pennsylvania sponsored his family, providing enough to get them started. Phuc's father had been a lawyer in Viet Nam, and both of his mother's parents had worked at the US Embassy. In America, however, his father is relegated to the tire factory, and his mother assembles electronics. Like many immigrant families they buy into the American dream, and eventually purchase a house and send their two children to college.But small-town America in the 1970s is a tough place for Vietnamese. They are a constant reminder of the war that was lost and lurid images of napalm and naked babies. Phuc isn't sure what a "gook" is, but he knows it's nothing good. Eventually he finds acceptance and friends in the punk skateboarding crowd. It's better to be part of an outcast group than be outcast on your own. But Phuc also discovers the Great Books, a list of titles that "All Americans" should read. At first it's a way to impress his teachers and earn a place amongst the academic crowd, but he then falls in love with literature for it's own sake, and that was to provide his ticket out of Carlisle.Sigh, Gone is irreverent, funny, and also heart-rending. As Phuc grows into himself, a chasm opens between him and his parents that is difficult to bridge. Language, customs, expectations, and culture comes between them in sometimes violent ways. I enjoyed Phuc's story and the literary tie-ins, as each chapter has a theme based on a classic in literature. Phuc now lives in Portland, Maine, and, after many years teaching Latin, currently runs a tattoo parlor.
    • 4/5
      I think I might be exactly the same age as the author of this book and his memories of all things pop culture made for a really fun extra while he recounted his childhood. I found this book thought provoking and engaging. A very interesting read.

    Book preview

    Sigh, Gone - Phuc Tran

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