"House of Sticks is a book that will assault and warm your heart at the same time--a classic immigrant tale, told from the perspective of a Vietnamese child who settled with her family in New York City in the early '90s with little to no knowledge about life in America... But it is also much more: a coming of age story, A New York hustle, a battle with a father who not only maintains an ironclad sense of filial duty, but also, fueled by his paranoia, exercises irrational control over things like vision correction. (In another elegant examination of absence, the book recounts what a fundamental challenge it is to move through the world without basic ability to see.)"
--Vogue, Best Books to Read 2021

"Out of heartbreaking inherited trauma, Tran discovers joy in new relationships and the grace for one of the most beautiful scenes of parent-child rapprochement I've ever read. Her new eyesight lets Tran see, most importantly, 'the voice I'd been unable to access all my life...on the page.' Words are strong enough to contain a life's story, holding together all the fractures in remembering and telling."
--Commonweal Magazine

"A moving recount of how Tran and her family immigrated from a small town in Vietnam to a two-bedroom railroad apartment in Queens, and how she forged her path in a new culture."
--Marie Claire, 20 New Books by Asian Authors to Get Excited About

"Tran found herself pulled in myriad directions by her desires: to please her family, to fit in with her friends, to chart her own course, to belong. She tells her own coming-of-age story in House of Sticks."
--Bustle, 44 New Must-Read Books Out This June

"In this moving debut memoir, Ly Tran recounts emigrating from Vietnam to the United States with her family in the early 1990s. It's in New York City that she comes into her own, at once attempting to fit into this new world as well as honor deep traditions, the need to contribute to the family and her father's resistance to new ways."
--Ms. Magazine

"A special memoir in which, though circumstances are difficult, love wins out...beautiful and inspirational."
--Fredricksburg Free-Lance Star

"In this coming-of-age memoir, author Ly Tran recounts how her family immigrated from Vietnam to Queens when she was a child, along with their troubles trying to make ends meet."
--NBCNews.com,10 Best Beach Reads for Summer

"[Tran's] deeply compelling memoir tells the story of growing up torn between two worlds: that of her hardworking Buddhist parents with sky-high expectations and the one she wants to discover for herself in America."
--HelloGiggles, 10 Best New Books to Add to Your June Reading List

"In her phenomenal debut, House of Sticks: A Memoir, Ly Tran mines both trauma and love from her coming of age as a young Vietnamese immigrant to the United States ... Her vivid, unadorned narration yields a painful but powerful exploration of the struggle to find a sense of self within a family at the cross-section of cultures, and Tran's story is impossible to forget."
--Shelf Awareness

"[An] emotional experience in the form of beautifully heartbreaking prose."
--Off the Shelf

"Tracing the paths of immigration and poverty, Tran's moving and exceptionally readable memoir is at once heartbreaking, shocking, and hopeful ... Tran is exceptional at telling her story with honesty and without judgment. Readers who loved Tara Westover's Educated (2018) will find a similarly compelling memoir of resilience in a not-often-seen America."
--Booklist, starred review

"I guarantee that you will never see the nail salon technician in the same way after reading Ly Tran's memoir. House of Sticks is a powerful report from the trenches of the immigrant experience and what it really means to become an American. It's Tran's story, but it's also the story of this country--and in this day and age we would do well not to forget that."
--Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will be Free and Brief Encounters With the Enemy

"Like Tara Westover's memoir, Educated, this book is a record of resilience. A story about finding a place in America and about finding a voice, Ly Tran's House of Sticks is destined to join the canon of refugee literature."
--Amitava Kumar, author of Immigrant, Montana

"In this remarkable memoir, Ly Tran tracks trauma and resilience with deep generosity for all the people in her life. Her prose is spare and unflinching, but the story she tells is layered and rich. This is an America we all need to know."
--Cris Beam, author of To The End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care

"With the trenchancy of a social novel, Ly Tran's House of Sticks tracks the cost of arriving and surviving in America. Hours of labor. Rent, food, square footage. Growing up between worlds that increasingly diverge, she explores with striking honesty and tenderness the family ledger, where the burden of payment and repayment is constantly being calculated, and where love is recorded as both debt and wealth. A completely unprecedented book."
--Heidi Julavits, author of The Vanishers

"Ly Tran's struggles to locate and nurture her essential self as a Vietnamese immigrant, a woman, an American, and a young writer offer an essential window into hitherto unseen lives. Spare, devastating, and redemptive, this book will open your eyes and heart."
--Julie Metz, author of Perfection and Eva and Eve