I read this pretty fast - it hooks you early and deep. Incredibly sad but hopeful. It's definitely about being the child of an immigrant parent, that dilemma of wanting your American peers' approval, proving you belong, and also wanting to feel 100%, be able to navigate your immigrant parents' culture as they do, prove yourself. 

But it's also about connecting through generations, illness, losing a loved one, belonging and dysfunction. Everyone's family story. 

It's always beautiful to see the threads the child thinks are unravelling at the parent's death are still there intact to be carried in memory and art.