Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir

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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, 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.

Author: Kat Chow
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 08/24/2021
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 8.42h x 5.81w x 1.25d
ISBN: 9781538716328

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 03/01/2021 pg. 67
Publishers Weekly 05/24/2021
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2021
Booklist 07/01/2021 pg. 15
Library Journal 08/01/2021 pg. 74
Shelf Awareness 08/24/2021

About the Author
Kat Chow is a writer and a journalist. She was 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 the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat.