Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir

by Kat Chow

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Searching for the source of sorrows that reverberate through generations, Kat Chow digs for the roots, unearthing the legacies of family dreams and cultural dissonance, preservation and reconciliation. Kat Chow is a remarkable storyteller. Emotion runs deep, but the prose is tender, the gaze clear, the voice nuanced by a generous love.

This "graceful, captivating" (New York Times Book Review) story from a singular new talent paints a portrait of grief and the search for meaning as told through the prism of three generations of her Chinese American family—perfect for readers of Helen Macdonald and Elizabeth Alexander.

Kat Chow has always been unusually fixated on death. She worried constantly about her parents dying—especially her mother. A vivacious and mischievous woman, Kat's mother made a morbid joke that would haunt her for years to come: when she died, she'd like to be stuffed and displayed in Kat's future apartment in order to always watch over her. 

After her mother dies unexpectedly from cancer, Kat, her sisters, and their father are plunged into a debilitating, lonely grief. With a distinct voice that is wry and heartfelt, Kat weaves together a story of the fallout of grief that follows her extended family as they emigrate from China and Hong Kong to Cuba and America. Seeing Ghosts asks what it means to reclaim and tell your family’s story: Is writing an exorcism or is it its own form of preservation? The result is an extraordinary new contribution to the literature of the American family, and a provocative and transformative meditation on who we become facing loss.

AN NPR BOOKS WE LOVE 2021 PICK * A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2021 PICK * A NEW YORK TIMESNOTABLE BOOK OF 2021 * A HARPER'S BAZAAR BOOK YOU NEED TO READ IN 2021 * A TOWN & COUNTRYBEST BOOK OF 2021 PICK * A FORTUNE BEST BOOK OF 2021 PICK 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538716335
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	03/21/2023
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	660,220
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kat Chow is a writer and a journalist. She was previously a reporter at NPR, where she was a founding member of the Code Switch team. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and on Radiolab, among others. She’s one of Pop Culture Happy Hour’s fourth chairs. She’s received a residency fellowship from the Millay Colony and was an inaugural recipient of the Yi Dae Up fellowship at the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. 

Editorial Reviews

"[U]ndeniably one of the best books you will read this year. . .  Chow has mastered the ability to voice the painful fallout of loss in all its excruciating detail, capturing the essence of how grief feels with each event along the way, no matter how small."—The Nerd Daily

"[Seeing Ghosts] could be such a heavy story, but it's got this marvelous mix of poetry and dry humor. . . The memoir is just so heartfelt, gorgeously written and rich in detail."—Here and Now

"A beautifully introspective reckoning with death."—South China Morning Post

"Chow’s memoir takes the reader on a journey from China and Hong Kong to Cuba and America. She reclaims her family’s history—and her own—through this masterpiece of experience."—SheReads

From the Publisher

05/24/2021

Journalist Chow writes longingly about her mother, who died from cancer, in this intimate debut about a life shaped by loss. “It is not incorrect to say that for years, the way my family grieved my mother was to avoid acknowledging her altogether,” she writes. In an effort to preserve her mother’s memory after her mother’s death in 2004, Chow traced the story of her mother’s life, from her birth in China in 1955 through her troubled marriage with Chow’s father in Connecticut to her painful last days. Woven in are several other family specters, including her maternal grandmother’s death at age 41 (“it seemed all the Yu women died young”); generational schisms caused by the Chinese Communist Party; and the infant death of Chow’s older brother. While deep emotion drives her writing, Chow generally avoids oversentimentality and buoys what could otherwise be an overwhelmingly despondent narrative with bursts of joy and irreverence—such as memories of her mother’s fondness for “kissing books” and playing pranks on her children. The result is a moving depiction of grief at its most mundane and spectacular. Agent: Jin Auh, the Wylie Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

08/01/2021

Journalist Chow confronts the loss of her mother in a memoir that illustrates the way grief can become a fixture in one's life—grief for the lost loved one and for all that remains unspoken and elusive. Chow's mother was born in China and emigrated to the U.S. to attend college, where she met her husband. When Chow was growing up, a failed restaurant venture and an ever-present sense of financial precarity fueled her parents' frequent arguments. After her mother's death from cancer in 2004, her older siblings head to college, and Chow is left to forge a relationship with her reticent father. She becomes a kind of reservoir for her family, absorbing their pain, unresolved antagonisms, and memories both warm and haunting. Her memoir is a vivid portrait of her loving and flawed Chinese American family. The book is a tribute to Chow's spirited mother, but it's also a revealing portrait of three daughters trying to negotiate a complicated relationship with their father. VERDICT Chow's book is an important and welcome addition to a growing catalogue of memoirs by a new generation of Asian American writers, including Michelle Zauner's Crying in H Mart and Anna Qu's Made in China.—Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

Library Journal

Kat Chow narrates this memoir about her mother’s death with quiet grace. She recounts stories about her Chinese-American family, from her own childhood and from her parents’ and grandparents’ lives, with openness and curiosity. Her voice remains steady throughout most of the audiobook, even when she’s describing her mother’s cancer treatment and the grief and loneliness of her mother’s death. That evenness matches the quality of her prose, which is flowing and lyrical. It’s especially moving listening to her speak in the voices of her mother and father—she does so with love, tenderness, and sometimes amusement. This beautiful audiobook is both an elegy for Chow’s mother and a celebration of her own Chinese-American heritage. L.S. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2021 - AudioFile

Kat Chow narrates this memoir about her mother’s death with quiet grace. She recounts stories about her Chinese-American family, from her own childhood and from her parents’ and grandparents’ lives, with openness and curiosity. Her voice remains steady throughout most of the audiobook, even when she’s describing her mother’s cancer treatment and the grief and loneliness of her mother’s death. That evenness matches the quality of her prose, which is flowing and lyrical. It’s especially moving listening to her speak in the voices of her mother and father—she does so with love, tenderness, and sometimes amusement. This beautiful audiobook is both an elegy for Chow’s mother and a celebration of her own Chinese-American heritage. L.S. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2021 - AudioFile

2021-06-19
A Chinese American writer reflects on the profound loss of her mother to cancer and how it informed her adulthood.

The poignancy of journalist Chow’s debut memoir can be felt instantly when she confesses that she still struggles to comprehend her mother’s death in 2004 and finds herself often rushing to glimpse her memorial. The author, a founding member of NPR’s Code Switch team, considers herself unique in a traditional Chinese family that refused to openly grieve. As a loving tribute, Chow vibrantly tells the story of her mother’s life with great dexterity and in luminous detail. Born in China, Chow’s mother immigrated to America to attend college and ended up charming her father at a tag sale, which led to a problematic marriage riddled with bickering, unrest, and money problems. Honoring her family’s ghosts, the author also writes movingly about the crushing death of her brother just an hour after his premature birth, the steady decline of her mother’s health as cancer ravaged her, and how the early deaths of the women in her family gives her both pause and cause for concern. Chow fondly recalls how her mother looked while dressing in her closet for work each morning and “how our bodies were similar, that I was an extension of you.” Her mother hid internal aches she blamed on age but were later revealed as symptoms of her terminal disease. There is levity braided into the memories, as well: Chow’s mother telling her, at age 9, that she wanted to be stuffed after her death so she could “sit in your apartment and watch you all the time,” fun family road trips, and her mother’s penchant for practical jokes. By uniting family memories, elements of Chinese culture, and an intimate perspective, Chow wraps tragedy and history into an affecting memorial.

A powerful remembrance of a family unmoored by the loss of its matriarch.

Kirkus Reviews