Mai Nguyen’s “Sunshine Nails” shines with heart and humour

Mai Nguyen’s debut novel Sunshine Nails (Simon and Schuster Canada, 2023) offers a vivid slice of the life of the Vietnamese immigrant community. Set in a family-owned nail salon in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood, the heartwarming and funny novel weaves a tale of family dynamics, immigrant identity, and ambition amid gentrification. A participant in this year’s Festival of Literary Diversity (The FOLD) in Brampton, Nguyen’s debut sparkles with an intrigue-filled plot and lively characters that readers will root for.

Protagonist Debbie Tran’s absentminded click on a scathing one-star review of her salon Sunshine Nails, spirals her into chaos. She becomes hyper aware of her “unkempt” nails and broken English – the exact details blasted by the ungenerous critic. And as if on cue, Take Ten, a trendy US-based salon chain surfing the gentrification wave hitting their neighborhood, pops up its first Canadian location right across the street. A desperate Debbie enlists her daughter Jessica, fresh from a breakup, to revamp Sunshine Nails. Suspecting shady dealings, she even starts shadowing Take Ten’s high-profile representative, Savannah Shaw.

Meanwhile, Debbie’s husband Phil is dabbling in dodgy dealings of his own, most notably by securing a loan that could risk the salon he is trying to save as well as the family’s livelihood. The cast of characters also includes their son Dustin, who works 80-hour weeks at a tech start-up, and Phil’s niece Thuy, who harbours dreams of a stable career, but proves herself a skilled nail tech. How far will the Trans go to preserve their salon? To answer this question, Nguyen crafts a lively portrait of this family and the broader Vietnamese Canadian community, turning their flaws into a narrative that is near-impossible to put down. 

The inspiration for Sunshine Nails is deeply personal for Nguyen: “My parents have been running a nail salon in Halifax ever since I was 8 years old. Growing up, all my Vietnamese friends had parents that worked in nail salons. It was just what everyone did.” Yet despite the prevalence of Vietnamese-run nail salons in Canada and the US, Nguyen didn’t see stories out there reflecting this experience. “So I wrote it!” she smiles, highlighting her desire to fill a void and showcase a community that is familiar yet underrepresented.

The book follows the journey of Debbie and Phil  after arriving in Canada as refugees from Vietnam in 1983. They choose English names inspired by 1980s rock stars Debbie Harry and Phil Collin as they settle in Toronto, then work a series of jobs until they are able to open Sunshine Nails. The characters sparkle with depth and authenticity. Diligent and passionate, they epitomize the work ethic of immigrants who “work very hard, never take breaks, and have wrapped their entire identity around this career”, explains Nguyen. At the same time, she challenges preconceptions by introducing complex, morally ambiguous decisions that they must make to safeguard their business and livelihood against the high-profile Take Ten. “I am well aware they play into the stereotype of the hard-working immigrant, but I wanted to subvert the model-minority trope,” she explains. “Like many refugees who have been ripped out of their home country, they both still carry that survivalist instinct.” 

Perhaps surprisingly, Sunshine Nails is genuinely and truly funny, and the humour makes the novel’s substantial themes of identity, class, and filial obligation more accessible. Nguyen chose comedy as her narrative vehicle to ensure the seriousness of the subjects would not overpower the story’s warmth and relatability. “I wanted to write about serious subject matters, but I didn’t want it to have a serious tone. I find the writing process much more enjoyable when my characters can laugh and feel joy,” she remarks.

A pivotal conflict in the novel arises with daughter Jessica’s initial reluctance to work at Sunshine Nails. “It was important for me to show the generational differences between the parents and children, especially when it came to how they viewed the work of a nail technician,” she shares. While Debbie and Phil see the job of nail technicians as a blessing, their children see it as a last resort: “For people born into financial security and plentiful job opportunities, like Jessica was, the idea of working on people’s hands and feet can seem beneath them. In general, I think our society tends to view service-sector workers as inferior, even if those workers are our own family members.”

The novel also explores everyday racism in a nuanced way. A significant moment in the novel revolves around Jessica’s reaction to the question “Where are you from?” during a job interview. Fraught with implications of otherness, “it’s a very loaded question – one that I got a lot growing up, oftentimes in my parents’ nail salon, even though I was born and raised in Canada,” explains Nguyen. “However, that question never bothered my parents because they were born in a different country, and were quite proud of it, actually.” Nguyen felt that this common yet complex scene was “an astute way to show how certain microaggressions can evoke different feelings among different individuals”.

The novel shares focus among the five members of the Tran family, and Nguyen admits that  she “found it quite difficult balancing all these characters’ perspectives”. She succeeds brilliantly in creating an authentic voice for each, and distinguishing these views so expertly that there is never confusion about whose eyes we are experiencing the action through. Thuy was the most difficult to write, as Nguyen knew the least personally about a new teen immigrant’s experience. And “like any family, there are going to be characters that shine more than others. I think Jessica and Debbie stood out the most, as I was writing. Debbie was the most steadfast in her convictions, and Jessica evolved the most out of any character.” And this author, at least, has a definite favourite: “Debbie has my heart,” smiles Nguyen.

Sunshine Nails is at once a heartfelt and hilarious exploration of the immigrant experience, a commentary on societal values, and a celebration of resilience and identity. Readers of all backgrounds will relate to, reflect on, and delight in the Tran family’s tribulations and triumphs. This memorable novel leaves readers looking forward to more from Nguyen – hopefully in the near future.

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2024