Novel set in USA, VIETNAM and JAPAN

18th February 2025

My Other Heart by Emma Nanami Strenner, novel set in USA, Vietnam and Japan.

My Other Heart by Emma Nanami Stenner is a beautifully written exploration of identity and belonging, especially as those things apply to first-generation immigrant children in the USA. The story is wonderfully involving: I didn’t want to put it down.

When Mimi Truang loses her toddler, Ngan, at Philadelphia International Airport, she is bundled onto a plane back to Vietnam and it seems her daughter is lost to her forever. Seventeen years later, she returns to look for her.

Sabrina Chen and Katherine (Kit) Hertzog have been friends from their earliest school days. Now they are on the brink of adulthood and great changes in their lives. Will the things that they have in common, including their part-Asian ethnicity, be enough to sustain their friendship? Or will the usual teen dramas and the increasing differences between them set them apart from each other?

The story covers the years during which the girls are growing up together in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Kit’s adoptive family are liberal, wealthy and white, whereas Sabrina’s mum is traditionally Chinese, a single parent, working several jobs to make ends meet. Kit has drawn the long straw in the lottery of life: her adoptive family’s circumstances are a passport to anything she wants to do. By contrast, Sabrina has to excuse herself from many things that would be too costly for her mum to afford. She has done this all her life without question. It is only as the girls begin to explore their biological backgrounds that things change and gradually a rift begins to open between them.

Kit knows little about her biological family. She is certain that her appearance means at least one of her parents was Japanese and she sets off on a summer trip to discover her “homeland”. Although Sabrina has her mum, Lee Lee, to ask about her background and her family in China, she finds that it is a closed book; Lee Lee won’t discuss it. Sabrina’s travel plans were hatched before Kit’s – her aim was to see China and explore her mother’s country – but things don’t go according to plan. Like many teenagers, the girls are yearning to establish their identify; to feel truly loved and cherished, and to overcome the things that are holding them back in life. Strenner does a fantastic job of keeping the reader invested in the girls’ story while keeping back just enough information to provide a deeply satisfying final twist.

Many of the situations and themes in the book are universal and it will appeal to a wide audience. I particularly enjoyed the author’s evocative descriptions of the places in the book, contrasting the cities of Tokyo, Ho-Chi-Min City (Saigon) and Philadelphia, but equally exploring the detail of Philly’s suburbs and the more rural parts of Japan and Vietnam. I understand the book’s working title was Sunshowers and the gorgeous descriptions of sunsets are just part of the book’s appeal.

Sue for the TrioFiction team

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