Moving, surprising, engrossing, and often delightful, Sigh Gone exposed me to wholly unfamiliar things and also sent me back to relive my own complicated coming-of-age. My growth was different, I had the option of faking it to fit in, and I did that for a few years until it became too exhausting, Tran did not have that option, especially as one of a very few Vietnamese people in Carlisle PA. I did not have to endure the weight of racism in addition to living a life that fit me like David Byrne's big suit some days and anything worn by Cardi B. on others. That is to say his experiences were infinitely more difficult than my own, but there was enough similarity that I could relate and walk alongside young Phuc. Like Tran, I was saved in part by punk rock (10 years earlier than Tran) and in part by literature. I was not nearly as smart and insightful about great books as Tran is/was, but they still did and do mean the world to me and are an important part of how I navigate the world. Unlike Tran I did not grow up the child of refugees trapped by cultural norms that do not really work in small-town America and beset by PTSD (though my mother was exactly that and I could see similarities.) Tran shapes his story around great books and music, and it works extraordinarily well. The device also gives him a chance to show the reader how important in his development wonderful compassionate teachers were, how they found and nurtured his unique mind and helped lead him to the things that helped him be his best self. ( )

Loved this! As a fellow immigrant (at age 9) GenXer, I can identify with so much in this story, although I don't think I could tell my story with quite such eloquence and emotion.

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. ( )

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/NTmB0N5ByD8

Enjoy! ( )

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!). ( )