For readers of Helen Macdonald and Elizabeth Alexander, an intimate and haunting portrait of grief and the search for meaning from a singular new talent as told through the prism of three generations of her Chinese American family. Kat Chow has always been unusually fixated on death. She worried constantly about her parents dying—especially her mother. A vivacious and mischievous woman, … 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.
I’ve been looking forward to Kat Chow’s memoir ever since she announced it and it exceeded all expectations. A gorgeously written, luminous exploration of grief. It has a nonlinear structure with snippets of essays, some longer than others, and even this is reminiscent of how grief functions. Her mother died of cancer when she was 13 and I was fascinated by the way she sometimes experienced her grief by imagining or sensing her mother’s ghost. There’s so much to admire in how Chow chose to explore her own experience of grief, as well as her family history as a child of immigrants.
Her mother’s death was naturally a ripple effect of loss throughout their family, strikingly seen through her father now needing to be the primary caretaker. He is not suited for the role, nor did he step up to the plate, possibly due to an undiagnosed mental illness or neurodivergence. He hoards and lets the house deteriorate. He resists most of his daughters’ advice or help, while insisting they respect him since he’s their father. It was often hard to read these parts and I really felt for them. Chow writes with compassion and grace about their relationship, even in the struggle.
I’m so glad she wrote this book.
I actually rather enjoyed this author… I listen to it as an audiobook instead of reading it and generally when an author does their own narrating it tends to be very boring. I was pleasantly surprised with this one and definitely enjoyed listening to this as I did dishes or housework and although I have not entered loss such as this author, I could definitely feel what she felt as her words came across the pages in a way to touch your heart. I was actually hoping there would be other books from this author, but I see that this autobiography is her only book. She is actually funny and a little sarcastic and I really enjoy that in an author and hopefully she may write other books in the future even if they are not an autobiography.
“This is what it means to lose someone, understanding how, after all these years, memories shift and shape us. How we cannot exorcise someone as much as we try; we must learn the ways in which we preserve parts of them in ourselves.” – Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow.
Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow publishes today, but this story has been unfolding for decades … and generations. When the author was 13, her beloved mother died. This was a tremendous loss for the entire family, but with her older sisters away at college, Kat’s daily life was most directly impacted by her mother’s absence.
In this deeply personal memoir, the author reflects on events that occurred in her childhood through an adult lens, including her mother’s death, her parents’ marriage, and her relationship with her emotionally distant father. Ms. Chow also shares her paternal grandparents’ history and her father’s search for his father’s remains in Cuba to fulfill his mother’s final wish.
Throughout this memoir, the author provides glimpses into her mother’s big personality and complex life – the woman who flashed goofy faces to make her daughters laugh, who sacrificed her future financial security to fulfill her daughter’s childhood wish, who loved and competed with her siblings, who worked in the insurance industry to provide for her family, and who made decisions that impacted her life because of her own health insurance.
Ms. Chow also shares her evolving relationship with her father who struggled to achieve success with various business ventures, who seems to lack the ability to speak without shouting, and who has filled his home with decades of possessions as a hoarder.
I appreciated the inclusion of family photos to view the author and her nuclear family at key moments discussed in the memoir. Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for the review copy of this powerful and relatable memoir.