NEW ORLEANS (press release) – One Book One New Orleans (OBONO) announced that they have selected “Daughters of the New Year” by E.M. Tran as the focus of their 2025 citywide reading and literacy campaign.
“One of the greatest joys of reading is being transported to a place I may never have visited, or meeting and understanding people I might have otherwise never met or understood,” said Tran in a release about the announcement. “I owe a great debt to the people and institutions in my life who gave me books. The idea that my novel could be an imaginative entryway for someone else because it is the One Book One New Orleans 2025 pick is such an honor! For ‘Daughters of the New Year,’ a book about Vietnamese people, to be considered a New Orleans novel worthy of being read by New Orleanians, is something from my wildest dreams.”
“Daughters of the New Year” moves backwards through time, beginning in present-day New Orleans and ending in Vietnam generations before the central characters were born. Along the way, the reader learns what brought the family to the United States and meets a long line of fierce women, each of whom shapes her family’s future in ways that even her daughters do not fully realize.
“‘Daughters of the New Year’ offers us an unforgettable cast of characters and calls readers to examine the art of storytelling within their own families and communities,” said Dr. Megan Holt, OBONO’s executive director. “It also calls on readers to more fully explore the ways in which the Vietnamese community has shaped New Orleans as we know it today.”
OBONO urges everyone in New Orleans to read “Daughters of the New Year” with the goal of fostering creating connections through this shared reading experience. OBONO partners with many organizations to remove barriers that would prevent access to the book, such as low literacy, incarceration, poverty, and visual impairment. Throughout the year, OBONO will host a series of events inspired by the book, each taking place either in a different neighborhood or online. These events are free and open to the public.
