How One-Woman Show Turns Family Shame Into A Legacy

Learn more about Susan Lieu, her one-woman show “140 Pounds” and her memoir “The Manicurist’s Daughter” here.

“Motivated By The ‘F Word’”

When Susan Lieu was little her parents and siblings told her she whined too much. 

My siblings were like, you always play victim, you know, and it really hurt me.

In Susan’s culture you didn’t complain, especially after all they’d been through. Susan’s mother led the family to escape communist Vietnam by boat, and gained US asylum. Within eight years she’d opened two nail salons and bought a house in northern California. Susan describes her mom as [quote] “the general of the house and the center of our livelihood … leading with the omniscience of Oz, the high expectations of Confucius, and the charm of Princess Diana.”

My mom always had the answer. She always knew what we're doing next and what we're gonna do after that. 

LAUREL: What do you think drove her to be the successful person, to be perfect, really?

SUSAN: F word, family, 100%. I mean, in her slate of siblings, she was number 10 out of 12. Others had ideas to escape as boat people, but after the war, she was the only one that kept going and doing it. We were on welfare and pretty, quite pretty quickly she learned that if you're off of welfare, you can sponsor your family over. So she was so motivated to figure this out… She started doing hair and then she's like, no, the money isn't nails…My mother has always been motivated by family. I mean, it didn't feel that way to me, right? Because the only time I ever got attention with her was like, okay, there's no customer in her seat. And then in in her customer's seat, I can sit there, but she's not talking to me. She's like calling the next shots for the next thing

LAUREL: As a child, you were this entertaining person. I imagine you had lots of feelings. And well, we all do, but some of us express them more than others… I'm just wondering how she reacted to that part of you.

SUSAN: I don't know if I was needier than most children, but I had my needs. And as a Vietnamese child of immigrants, of refugees, you fall in line, you're not to disrupt the order. It's about the collective harmony. Okay, none of this was spelled out to me when I was a kid. …my God, going to Safeway and wanting the great white shark gummies, you know? And just like wanting it so bad, she'd be like, ‘we don't have money for that.’ 11 There's this term in Vietnamese, which is ‘nyon nyeo,’ which is like, ‘you're just such a whiny baby, you know? Like you're so emotional.’ … You're not supposed to have your needs. It's about the collective. And that's where I couldn't fit in the box. …And being vulnerable, okay, Brene Brown was not around in the 90s. And also not for Asian people, right? Like it is not seen as a sign of strength. It is seen as such a sign of weakness…And so for me to always, to say how I feel was suppressed, it was blamed and shamed. I really, I hate it that I couldn't fall in line.

This is a story about how Susan learned to turn her so-called weakness into her super power. This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales. 

The Entertainer

Since she was six years old Susan Lieu spent most of her time at her family’s nail salon. She’d refill the cotton balls and acetone, pump lotion in the back storage room, call to confirm appointments and entertain customers.

There was always work to be done. That was after school care. That was summer camp, right? My Saturdays and Sundays were at the nail salon. And it was all about trying to get ‘thousand dollar days.’ It was about asking our ancestors through lighting incense to help us that day. And it was about trying to make sure we turned no customer away. At the head table was my mom, followed by all my aunts, a cousin, and sometimes my dad would float on through. And we were all working on the family business, and that was our livelihood.

But Susan says she wasn’t coordinated enough to paint nails so she accepted the role of entertainer.

The thing with Vietnamese people is they only give you one shot. And if it's not perfect, you're out of there. The only role that I could do that no one else could do was entertain the customers when we're running late. I know we're running late. So now I'm going to entertain the lady,  talk to her about her dogs, her pets, her divorce, anything to keep her there because then I could start to see when she felt anxious that we're running behind and that her appointment was a fake appointment time. And I would just try my best to keep her there.

Susan’s mom was a perfectionist and expected perfection from Susan and her three siblings.

SUSAN: When my brother, my other brother, he was caught smoking weed at college, and then my mom was like, okay, great, I'm just gonna change the locks. 

LAUREL: No second chance.

SUSAN: No! It's just like action, consequence. And so I was terrified of her. Everyone deeply respected her. And she always looked fabulous. And she was leading us into the sunset where within eight years of coming to America, we had a house...Like to only come over, to have the ability to escape as boat people, she started an underground lottery operation and won at her own game three times

North Star Gone

One fall day in 1996 Susan’s brother picked her up and told her their mom was in a coma. They had to drive an hour away to a San Francisco hospital to be with her. Susan was 11 so her only concept of a coma was what she’d seen on TV in soap operas.

They always wake back up. They have one in a million chance of surviving and then they do and then it's fine…  I remember going into the room and I hear all the beeping of the machines and her face is like sunken in and like. There's like bags of liquid attached to her and she's like, she doesn't bolt up and yell at me, you know? Like I was sitting there going like, what is going on? Like I thought like she would have recovered by now. My aunt being like, you need to beg your mom more to make her come back. Like you need to cry harder and ask her to come back ... I'm holding her very cold, clammy hands, which were like totally scary.

Her mom never came back. After five days in a coma she died, and no one would answer Susan’s questions about what happened.  And she couldn’t talk to anyone about her last conversation with her mom.

I was living with this secret guilt that I had never told anyone, which was earlier that morning. I had told my mom I hated her because She didn't want me to go to volleyball tryouts. She's like, we don't have money for the uniforms. And I was like, I hate you so much. Like, you're never around anyways. And like, this is my time to finally assimilate into American culture. And I had told her, those were my last words to her.

It wasn’t until days later that the reality of her mom’s death hit her.  

I'm walking in the school, I see all these kids playing hopscotch and ball wall and I'm like, sitting there and being like, I consciously think my youth is over…I can never have that much fun ever again. Then my bully, Jessica, comes up to me. She goes, what's wrong with you? Did your mom die or something? And that's when I was like mortified. I was like, my God, what did the teachers tell? Does everyone know? my God. my God. And I'm like, then I'm starting to cry. This is the first time I can really have a real release The lady who's on yard duty  I just like run to this woman. I don't even know her, but she's got huge boobs and she's got a lot of perfume on. And she goes, ‘sweetheart, what happened?’ And it was like, no one up until this point has actually checked in with me with that type of tenderness. I grabbed her and put my head into her boobs, her big squishy boobs. And I just tell her my mom died. And then I start sobbing and I can't stop sobbing.

“Small At Home, Big At School”

Susan desperately wanted to talk with her family about her mom.

So often I was like, tell me about her or God forbid I asked them, ‘are you guys okay?’ And it was just like, like, ‘whoa, Susan, like you're living in the past. Let it go.’ I felt ashamed to be me.

Her dad had to sell off one of the salons and had trouble managing the other.

So I felt like a burden and a nuisance. And so I tried to be small at home.

And so at school I went hard with extracurriculars, community service, student government, and within five years I was the president of my school, my high school…I also got a lot of positive affirmation from the adult supervisors or advisors for the different clubs and different organizations. And I felt like it was this amazing meritocracy where the more effort I put out, the more approval I got. And I was like, I love this. So by the time I graduated high school, I think I was running five clubs, a volunteer organization for the county.

I watched Legally Blonde and got inspired and applied to Harvard and was the first person in my school's history to get in. 

LAUREL: You said that your life was out of control…Can you talk about how you found that control?

SUSAN: So many dumb ways, my God. The first one was dieting. Like, I remember after my mom died, I was reaching for a second bowl of rice, and my dad and my aunts, they're like, they stopped me right there, and they're like, if you eat too much, no one will ever love you. And then you'll die alone… my body wasn't mine. Like my body was part of the collective, right? And they could say, they could call the shots on that. And so instead of me listening to my body or like doing what brought me joy, it was more like, what do the elders expect of me? I've done like all the diets, including MasterCleanse, which was so dumb, especially when I was working. And like, that makes you go diarrhea, right? And like, and I was like on conference calls, on mute, running to the bathroom…. I wanted to be so loved…And so I just stayed and I can still remember two relationships too long. know, one, was like both of them were super dysfunctional. One was very borderline abusive.  I got stuck in a Korean yoga cult when I was at Harvard because the rules were clearly defined on how to belong. It was pretty clear on what to do.And there were many times that I was like, this is a cult. And I would try to quit, but then here's the sad, this is the saddest part. I would look back at my default life and I would look back at the norms that I felt with my family or like, what were relationships like with my friends? And it didn't have this deep emotional intimacy that I wanted. And so I consciously would go back to the cult.

Avenge Mother’s Death

It wasn’t until years after her mom died that Susan learned of the circumstances surrounding her death – that she had a botched tummy tuck by an uninsured doctor who was on probation. Turns out many people sued him, including Susan’s family. But they only received a small compensation based on their income.  

When I was in 10th grade, my ex-crush came up to me in homeroom and he showed me this newspaper from San Francisco and he was like, your mom's in it. I'm like, what are you talking about? And it was this big expose talking about my mom and the doctor. And there was quotes from my brother. And I was sitting there learning so much about what happened….I was so busy in high school, I didn't have time for this. Also, I don't think I had any capacity to deal with it.

So she buried it under all of her extra curricular activities, got her bachelors from Harvard and went on to get her MBA from Yale. At 29 she was sitting in a negotiation class when her professor inspired her.

And our negotiation professor …is talking about like the world is your oyster. You can have what you want. Like this is your time for your big pivot. Like do what you want in life. And I'm sitting there, this light bulb goes off. And I'm like I have two Ivy League degrees. I think and speak in English. I have so much privilege that my father didn't have when my mom died suddenly, where he had to talk and confer with my 19-year-old brother to translate for him in the hospital and with all the legal matters. I can avenge my mother's death.  And now my dad won't like think I'm a black sheep anymore. How wrong I was. I call up my dad. I ask him for information. He loses his, he like explodes. And he's like, don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. 

So she googled the doctor and found out he was still practicing in Alameda, California. She discovered 30 percent of his clientele were Vietnamese refugees.

SUSAN: Now I'm just kind of like, I'm gonna do a multi-prong marketing campaign to make his life hell. 

LAUREL: There's so many layers there, right? Like your mom wanting to look a certain way. And then also this man who preyed on Vietnamese women, find out that he was uninsured, he had all these other lawsuits, like I'm just imagining the rage, like what when it all clicked into place.

SUSAN: I was like, how does this work? You know, cause this is essentially white collar crime, right? Like if, if he was an immigrant, a black man doing this, like all like this would not be okay, but somehow it's okay. And somehow you can be on probation for like, I mean, I guess at this point, maybe he's on probation for 15 years. 41 Then I started learning about the California Medical Board system, and about lobbying groups and money, and I was just sitting there going like, my God, 42 I was just so disgusted. I was just so disgusted because there was so much trust in him. 

But the investigation would have to wait. Susan was finishing up business school with exams and job interviews. Then she made a cross country move to Seattle, took a demanding marketing job and married her boyfriend Marvin. So several months passed before she recommitted to avenging her mother’s death. 

I call my girlfriend who, because of networks, went to Harvard Law School. I was like, Kathy, give it to me straight. Like, can we do a class action lawsuit here?...And she was like, Susan, he died. He died last month from like Parkinson's. And I was like, my God, I'm in my little den. I've taped up his picture. I've taped up anything I found on the internet about him. I'm like sitting here going like, Susan, you dumb fool. 

“140 Pounds”

For years Susan had wanted to be a performer. She’d tried stand-up comedy and really enjoyed it until she got heckled. Worried she’d be attacked again, she stayed away from the stage for three years. 

Not long after her wedding Susan was working as a consultant for Microsoft, a job she hated, so rewarded herself with an acting class. On the first day of class she told a story about wanting to avenge her mother’s death. A friend encouraged her to workshop it into a one woman show. Around the same time her husband told her he was ready to have kids.

So much of becoming a mother was, I want to know my mother so I can become a mother. And the other part was, God, I feel like such a coward and disappointed with the adult I became because I walked away from the stage. I walked away from that orbit I felt when I got heckled at a charity comedy show. And so I just, I raised the stakes and I was like, I'm only gonna become a mother if I confront my cowardice by putting on a one woman show. …We sell out the run and I was like, okay, I'm gonna take out my IUD. Great, you know, like it was more than I could have imagined. It was beautiful, was cathartic. I call it therapeutic theater.

Susan called the show “140 Pounds” – both her mother’s weight and her own. 

Susan Susan, turn down the music.

Why you up so early?

I want to go to school early.

For what?

Volleyball tryouts.

We don’t have money for the uniform.

You’re never around so why do you care?

Hey, where you go?

I’m coming home late.

No!

I hate you!

With the help of video interviews with her family and photos, Susan recounted her mother’s death and delved into the grief, intergenerational trauma and body image issues that Susan had grappled with as well. In the process of writing the show she sifted through depositions surrounding her mom’s surgery to uncover the truth.

She was 140. Right? When I read that line, like something went off in my brain where I was like, my God, my body is a cookie cutter image of my mother's body. My mother's DNA is in me and I look like her…I'm like, wow, my body is her last gift to me. And I can keep hating that, you know? And then where am I? 

When I was going through the depositions I actually saw pictures of her belly fat. The pictures, her last picture she took for her consult. And I looked at it. I was like, ‘oh my God, she wasn't fat.’ aAd so I was sitting there going like, how much more do I need to beat myself up?

‘Piecing Together This Portrait Of My Mother’

Susan felt she was receiving signs from her mom. So at one point she went to see a psychic, one of her aunt’s nail salon customers.

I'm sitting there talking with psychic Cindy and I'm like, ‘ma, should I stop?’ …

She laughs at me, she goes, ‘this isn't about you. This is about the work that we need to do ‘… And we got more work to do. Heart opening, relief. Because up until this point, like my siblings are kind of still skeptical about what I'm doing. And so all of a sudden I got this permission from my mom to keep going. 

Susan went on to publish a memoir last year called “The Manicurist’s Daughter” that expands on the themes explored in her show. She was featured in the LA Times and she’s received many accolades but says the most rewarding outcome has been her new found connection to her mother.

I feel more close to her than ever before. She feels so much more alive to me than ever before. Remember, she was forbidden. She was a silent secret. And now she's exalted and we can talk about her, tragic story. Yes, full of shame. And also when we name that shame, we can be liberated, right? We are not relegated to the past. We're not stuck in the past. We can let it go. 

LAUREL: How has performing your story, writing your memoir helped you heal?

SUSAN: I'm not living in shame anymore. I'm not hiding. What has been cathartic was actually finding answers, piecing together this puzzle of my mother, this portrait of my mother that is never gonna be fully complete, but boy is it more filled in than ever before… for so long, it was all a secret. I think for me, the biggest part is I felt so lonely my whole life. Like, I felt like a freak of nature, a black sheep, like why am I creating more pain for my family? And when I was able to go on stage, especially that premiere of 140 Pounds, share the story, share the sadness, share the grief, share the humor to keep you there. And then I looked up and I saw people were crying with me. I think in my loneliness, there was so much self-pity and victimization. And now those things are still there, but they're accompanied by other friends too of connection and empathy.

What I have been surprised this entire journey is that the more I have watered my calling, the more I have felt purpose in the work that I do. It's just so amazing to feel recognized for speaking my truth and to feel that there's value for somebody else… and little did I know that my calling would be to confront my deepest shame.

With Motherhood Comes New Perspective

In March of 2020 as the pandemic arrived in Washington, Susan went into labor.

I come in with my own trauma around hospitals for good reason. But I was like asking the nurses, ‘do you employ anyone here on probation?’ They're like, no. And I was like, ‘okay, cool, just give me your full name.’ 

Susan thought of her mother often and went through a second wave of grief wishing she’d been there with her.

For me to now be 39 and to exceed her age and to go through my own insecurities as a mother and with my body and around life and around my peers and thinking about achievement and thinking about legacy and to think I did not have the same pressures and stressors that she did at all. And yet life still feels hard. And so now I...I have this different perspective as an adult now because now I see her as an insecure human.

Parenting her son gave Susan a new perspective on her dad as well. For the longest time she wanted to understand him. At one point in college she had the opportunity to study in Switzerland and visited the UN library to learn about refugees. 

That's how much I was trying so hard to understand because anytime I touch that button of asking about the past, I didn't understand it was PTSD because he never said, ‘I have PTSD.’ And there's something that motherhood does where it really bridges the understanding of life is hard. Adults don't know everything. I'll never fully understand the extent of my father's suffering and pain.

So when she took her one-year-old son to visit her dad in Houston Susan’s husband reminded her to make the most of the time they had together.

He did his best. That's what his best looked like. He didn't have the capacity and the tools to like be emotionally vulnerable and connect with me as a teenager. He still doesn't. That generation they see mental health is still very heavily stigmatized. Right? He doesn't have the tools and capacity to be like, ‘hey, Susan, when you bring that up, I’m trying to protect myself because I don't know what I’m going to do if I fall apart.’ I have the privilege to recognize what is going on, because I stand on the shoulders of his sacrifice. And I'm going to hold my tongue a little bit more, because I'm only going to see you eight to 12 more times.

When Susan’s family sued the nurse involved in her mother’s surgery, they received $250,000, the cap on medical malpractice at the time. A couple years ago Susan worked with a consumer watchdog group to change the law to adjust the cap for inflation. 

And what that does is it doesn't beg bad apple doctors to just be better, like be best, you know? It's more like, let's change the incentives so that lawyers have an incentive to represent poor people because it was based also on your lifetime income. And also bad apple doctors have greater penalties. So maybe don't keep committing crimes. Like it's actually trying to change the incentives and create more accountability

Susan spoke before the California Medical Board and helped pass the Fairness for Injured Patients Act increasing the cap on damages in medical malpractice cases. 

I was just one person in this movement. A lot of people have been working on this for quite some time. But I did feel proud, you know, and it was very hard for me to feel proud, because nothing's ever enough. But I was kind of like, okay, like, this is actually part of my mom's legacy. Like, this is one thing we're able to change. 

It’s taken Susan many years to change the story she’s told herself about whining too much and playing the victim.

What does it mean to play victim? That you're vocal about your needs? And so it's kind of like, am I a victim or am I a canary in the coal mine. It's a risk to be vulnerable, but the question is, is what's the risk if you're quiet, right? Are you willing to live with that risk and how that pain erodes in your body? And for me, I was just done with it.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.