In Mai Nguyen’s ‘Sunshine Nails,’ Nail Techs are Front and Center

Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, nail salons were a way of life for Mai Nguyen. Her parents owned a salon, as did other relatives and friends’ parents.

Despite this, and the fact that salon life is a shared lived experience among Vietnamese refugees in North America, the 34-year-old Toronto resident rarely saw any stories where the nail techs were actually the main characters.

“Whenever you see nail technicians or scenes or stories taking place at nail salons, the nail techs are usually the side characters. They usually don't even have a name. They probably don't have speaking parts,” she says. “They're probably there to say a joke or be the butt of a joke, or listen in on whatever conversation the two main characters are having.”

This led to Sunshine Nails, Nguyen’s debut novel—out today. The book follows the Trans, a Vietnamese Canadian family running a mom-and-pop nail salon in Toronto, who suddenly find themselves struggling to keep the business alive after a multimillion dollar nail salon chain moves in down the street. Attempting to keep their salon alive, the family resorts to blackmail, gambling, stalking, and more, to take down the competition.

I recently spoke with Nguyen about her book, wanting Southeast Asian stories that go beyond trauma, and “bad” Asian representation.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

"Sunshine Nails" follows a Vietnamese Canadian family trying to keep their nail salon alive.

Courtesy of Mai Nguyen

Samantha Pak: What got you into writing?
Mai Nguyen: I originally started off my career as a journalist in the magazine industry, working as a production editor and then as a freelance writer. And then I wanted to do something on the side that was for myself, so I took a fiction writing course at the University of Toronto. I started writing the first pages of Sunshine Nails, not thinking I'm gonna write a whole book or anything. But I had some assignments and they asked us to write a few chapters. I really was enjoying writing the story and my fellow students and teachers were really enjoying what I was writing. So I figured, “Okay, maybe I'll just write a bit more and see what becomes of it.” And five years later, the book is out.

It takes place in Toronto, around 2016. (About a year earlier) The New York Times published this really huge expose on labor abuses in nail salons. It brought a lot of good to the industry because it cracked down on these really exploitative practices. But I also think it harmed the industry in that it painted all Asian-owned nail salons as bad apples. I wanted to set the nail salon story against that backdrop.

SP: Personally, with the exception of maybe two times I've gotten my nails done, it's always been Vietnamese people.
MN: Yeah, growing up I always thought it was weird that my parents wanted to work in a nail salon. First of all, you don't even get your nails done and since when do you care about nail fashion? When I got older, I realized the majority of the Vietnamese diaspora are opening nail salons because it's their one means of financial salvation. It's a tried-and-true method.

SP: Did you ever work at the salon?
MN: I worked at the salon for summers in high school and university. It's a really tough job. You need to have a lot of upper body strength. You're holding up legs and arms for hours at a time. You're bending and hunched over for a long period of time. It takes a toll on the body, for sure. But it was a really fun job. I got to meet lots of interesting people and—it might sound gross—but seeing people's feet go from zero to 10 was really satisfying.

SP: Were your personal experiences something that you were able to include in Sunshine Nails?
MN: A lot of the scenes that take place in the nail salon are from my own lived experience. Things like when two best friends come in to do their nails. They're gossiping about their whole life and you're listening in and privy to all of these nitty gritty details of their date last night, or weird things that their husband is doing, or issues they’re having with their children.

We also get really problematic customers as well. Customers that get really angry at the service, that don’t want to pay. We deal with some microaggressions as well from customers. I channeled all those experiences and put it into the book.

SP: As a writer, when things annoy me or piss me off, sometimes I'll write it out and be like, “This is how I wish I would have responded!” Do you have any of those moments where the characters at the salon have an annoying or angry customer and they're clapping back, but in real life, you wouldn't?
MN: Oh yeah. In the book, a white woman mimes a really famous, or infamous, nail salon comedy skit by Anjelah Johnson, where she starts using the Asian accent. And the character goes, “Oh, is that why you don't have boyfriend?” And Jessica, the Vietnamese daughter in the family, is like, “It's okay for me to say that but not for you.”

Whereas, I would probably just laugh along. The novel was a great outlet for being able to clap back at these awful characters but they're not real and I can write awesome retorts.