Guest post by Linh Ly Is Doing Just Fine author Thao Votang
Thao Votang is the author of Linh Ly Is Doing Just Fine. Her work has been published in Salon, Hyperallergic, Sightlines, Southwest Contemporary, and Lucky Jefferson. When she’s not watering her plants or playing tennis, she can be found reading one of the many books she has put in her bag or hidden under that couch cushion. Her fiction is informed by her experience as part of the Vietnamese diaspora deep in the Lone Star State, her interest in how we love our mothers, and the climate catastrophe.
Releasing July 23, Linh Ly Is Doing Just Fine depicts the life of 27-year-old Linh Ly’s obsessions when her recently divorced mother begins dating.
Life is so fraught in your twenties. Because life thus far has been so short, there is this skewing to it. Everything is BIG. Anything means Everything because there is less for comparison. The twenties are full of overwhelming emotions, mistakes, and the feeling that one misstep could set you on an irreversible trajectory. Brains are still forming, and identities are being built, reshaped, and reshaped. In my debut novel, Linh Ly is Doing Just Fine, my protagonist is just starting her journey to figure out what kind of person she’s capable of being. Here are five books that helped me get through my messy twenties:
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
My first introduction to a genius writer. This magic realist novel follows a character simply known as the Kid in a strange city called Bellona, where everything seems to happen through a layer of mist and mystery. Delany showed me it was possible to have fun while writing, experiment, write precisely and extravagantly simultaneously, and push what I thought novels could do. Delany includes all the layers of life, from dirt under fingernails to dreams, in his books in a way that I will spend my life trying (and probably failing) to match.
Where We Go When All We Were is Gone by Sequoia Nagamatsu
This exquisite collection of stories was a touchstone for years. My twenties were largely impacted by the good parts of social media — making friends on Twitter and things like that. While I didn’t achieve friendom with Nagamatsu, being able to witness his journey from publishing this collection to the ups and downs of the time that progressed before How High We Go in the Dark became a national bestseller — that’s special. This long game of unknowning that is life is tough to sit with in your twenties. But if you’re watchful, you can find people like Nagamatsu who are open enough to share their experiences with strangers and, by doing so, help them out. I think that’s really what writing and reading is about.
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
A love story where the challenge faced is time travel? This beautiful novel uses a supernatural element to broach what it means to contribute to a long-term relationship. It touched me especially because I was in the midst of committing to the work required to keep a lasting love. I needed to learn what it meant to love as a verb when I hadn’t grown up with healthy examples, and this book helped me see that it wasn’t only the times of togetherness.
The Street by Ann Petry
This is a story of a Black woman raising her son in Harlem in the 1940s. The terror, miscommunication, and amplification of fear due to constant stress, which drives the main character toward her ultimate decision, still rises in my mind today. Perry’s novel’s pacing is eloquent, and the rising tension is perfect. When I first read it, I was struck by the familiarity of that increasing fear and felt less alone by having this book near.
The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
How else could I end this list but with this quartet that follows two friends through their childhoods into adulthood and motherhood? A woman I looked up to recommended these books to me, and I think the way I came to them is just as important as the impact of the novels. In the books, Ferrante gave me a glimpse of how I would soon be able to see life as a longer, unpredictable thing with many sharp edges and ways of interpretation. I needed that as I looked toward my thirties and, with luck, far beyond.
