Hair

Jade Hidle grew up tweezing her mother’s hairs. As the distance between them grew, she began pulling her own.

Born in the shadow of mixed-race Vietnamese children deemed “bụi đời” (“dust of life”), she struggled to find belonging in her family’s cultures. Her yearning for acceptance propelled her to search for her identity in ghosts, Hollywood stars, punk music, teachers and students, tattoo artists, and a string of therapists. Through these fluctuating relationships that dented and defined her mixed Vietnamese American identity, Jade wrestled with her cultural inheritance.

After two decades of compulsive hairpulling and a turbulent relationship with her Vietnamese mother, it was not until she became a mother herself that healing began.

A mix of poems, essays, and letters, this memoir testifies to trauma recovery as reparenting our younger selves. It details how various mental illnesses are compounded by histories of racism, from the Vietnam War to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, this book unveils the shame, guilt, and tragic archetypes shrouding mental health for Vietnamese Americans. With honesty and humor, Hair: A Lai Mỹ Memoir is a story of how breaking cycles is an ongoing process of becoming a daughter and mother. It is a story that tells us that healing is possible.