Halifax-raised author paints nail-salon experience with honest brush in new book

When Mai Nguyen was eight years old, her parents opened Lee's Nails, one of Halifax's first family-run nail salons, on Quinpool Road.

Her debut novel, Sunshine Nails, is being published on July 4 and is based on her experiences as a second-generation Vietnamese immigrant growing up in the nail salon industry amid gentrification. 

In an interview with CBC News, Nguyen said the book grapples with family resilience, generational differences and the diversity of immigrant experiences. The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity and length.

To begin, the publication date is right around the corner. How are you feeling?

So many feelings are going through me right now. I'm nervous, I'm excited, I'm relieved that the day is finally coming. I worked on this book for about four years, and it took one year to get into production, so about five years since I first put pen to paper. So yeah, it's been a long time and to finally see it come out is like a dream come true.

You've written articles for publications as a journalist but Sunshine Nails is your debut novel. What inspired you to write in this format?

I grew up in a nail salon family. My parents ran a nail salon since I was eight years old. And we're not the only family I know that have centred their lives around nail salons. My best friend's parents run a nail salon. All my cousin's family run nail salons. Our neighbours run nail salons. 

It's a pretty dominant career to have for Vietnamese immigrants and it's such a big cultural phenomenon in our community. Yet, it was hard to find any stories out there of what it's like to work at a nail salon or why so many of these people gravitate towards it. 

I considered writing about it through a journalism lens and I have written non-fiction articles about the Vietnamese nail salon community. But I thought fiction was a really fun and great avenue to go down to talk about the nail salon community. Because you can really make your characters come alive and you can have them run into crazy drama that raises the stakes. And so I thought it was a really fun outlet to highlight the nail salon community and tell an interesting and timely story at the same time.

Can you tell me a little bit about the experience, and some of the downfalls and insights of growing up in the nail salon environment? 

Lee's Nails was one of the first family-run nail salons in Halifax, and so it was definitely new territory for my parents. I was only eight at the time, so to me, I thought it was super cool that they were running their own shop. I got to hang out in it whenever I wanted. I got to get my nails painted for free anytime I wanted. To me, it sounded like such a cool job.

But for my parents, it was definitely a means of survival for them. Prior to opening up their nail salon, they have been working a lot of odd jobs like cleaning schools, cleaning gyms, they picked blueberries on weekends to make some extra cash, my mom worked as a sewing machine operator for a while. They were struggling to make ends meet and they heard about how nail salons gave their friends and family a lot of financial freedom. 

So, they decided to take the leap and open a nail salon. They took the training that they needed. They found a unit for lease on Quinpool Road and opened it up. It wasn't anything fancy at the time. I remember there was this really ugly 90s-style green floral couch there. We didn't have a TV. We had a Sony boombox playing jazz music in the background. So it was very no frills. But slowly over time, they were getting a lot of customers. 

But, any entrepreneur will say, there are downfalls. Hours were super long, I remember my parents working very late into the night. Sometimes you get customers that aren't happy with the results. And my parents don't have the best English, especially back then, their English wasn't the best. So, there were some communication barriers that they had to face as well. They also had to deal with competition.

The book deals with some important and heavy topics like gentrification, racism and financial stress and how those stressors can put a strain on family relationships. But you managed to infuse humour amid it all. How?

I think that comes a lot from the family I grew up in and the culture we're raised in. Vietnamese people, they have a very traumatic past. My parents were displaced by the Vietnam War and they had to pick up everything they had and move to a new country. And yet they always seem to be so optimistic, despite all the horrors and traumas that they faced. 

So, I think that's just like a natural spirit that we all host as Vietnamese people. We always want to find joy, even in the dark times. So in this book, I naturally wanted to write characters that were a little funny and silly, despite the fact that the world around them was sort of falling and crashing.

In your acknowledgements, you say, "For all the immigrant nail techs out there, I hope you enjoyed being the main character for once." Why was it important for you to place nail techs and a nail salon family front stage to help tell their stories?

It was really important to me to write a story centred around nail technicians who were the main characters. Because if you look at our mainstream culture, nail technicians are often side characters. They're often nameless. They're often the butt end of the joke. They're usually the people you see on the corner of the screen, while the two main characters are having a conversation. They rarely get to speak at all. 

And so I really wanted to place nail techs at the forefront because, like everyone else, they're also complex individuals. They have a story, they're not just their hands and their labour. They have complex lives and personalities. And that's partly why I wrote that line in the acknowledgements. I wanted to make them the main characters for once and have them be as nuanced as any other character you see out there.

What are your expectations and goals for the book once it's published?

I hope it reaches as many readers as possible and that it resonates with them. It's not a story that a lot of people are familiar with. I think people are familiar with nail salons and nail trends, but they don't actually know what happens behind the scenes.

I've gotten word that people found it fascinating that they finally got to see what it was like to work at a salon and what the struggles are like. Because as a customer, when you're sitting on the other side of the table, you're just getting your nails done. You're just there for 30 minutes or an hour and then you leave. 

So, I hope when people pick up the book and read it, and the next time they go to a nail salon, they see their nail tech as a whole human being with a life outside of work.