OneTribune

Genre: Memoir
Sub-genres: Experimental autobiography, adolescent reflection, mental health narrative
Themes: Suppressed memory, identity uncertainty, emotional navigation, adolescence, internal conflict
Content Warning: Contains introspective references to personal emotional trauma, disconnection, and isolation—nothing graphic, but the tone may be heavy for some readers.

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To call Wynn Thanh Phi’s book a memoir feels both accurate and misleading. Fictionally Nonfiction is less about what happened and more about how it felt—blurred timelines, fractured insights, and lingering shadows of something not quite forgotten but not fully known either. It’s an introspective act of translation, where the author isn’t just telling her story—she’s trying to find it.

The narrative moves more like memory than literature, which means it doesn’t follow traditional arcs. Instead, we get a mix of fragmented recollections and unspoken questions. It’s like flipping through a photo album where some images are in focus, others torn, and some so faded they raise more questions than answers. The tone isn’t one of complaint or confession—it’s more like a quiet sorting through mental drawers you’ve kept closed too long.

Readers used to sharp, plot-driven memoirs might find the flow disorienting. But for those who’ve experienced the ambiguity of emotional repression or lived through long stretches of their lives in survival mode, the disjointed rhythm might feel strangely familiar. There’s power in its pauses, its hesitations, its raw edges. It speaks to a kind of emotional language that doesn’t always get translated into words—until someone like Wynn tries.

This is not a memoir of closure or clarity. It’s not a therapeutic breakthrough in disguise. Instead, it’s a portrait of being unfinished, and choosing to share that unfinishedness with others. In that sense, it’s braver than most books that claim to have it all figured out.

You don’t read this book to be entertained. You read it to feel less alone in your own fragmented becoming. If you’ve ever tried to write about yourself and realised the version you were telling wasn’t quite true—but it wasn’t quite false either—this book might feel like finding company in that space between.

Wynn Thanh Phi’s voice is one that doesn’t pretend to be ready. And maybe that’s the most honest kind.

Top Tier Book Award

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