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reading_rainbow_with_chris's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.5
“Seeing Ghosts” by Kat Chow
Kat Chow’s mother passed away when she was a child, leaving her alone to finish growing up with her father, her sisters having already left home. However, her mother is always there, haunting Kat as she encounters the rest of her life as both woman and a Chinese-American growing up in the world.
This is a beautifully written memoir. Chow has done a remarkable job of stitching together generations of loss which affect the mourning and memory of her present family. Although the most obvious ghost is her mother, Chow also seems to create a ghost of Chinese exclusion from American life. Racism, and its abstract and concrete effects, are always an undercurrent to the family story. The continued haunting of multiple entities makes for a complex examination of how one loss raises many specters.
This particular memoir didn’t do anything that astounded me, or struck me as wholly unique or creative. Yet, it contained beautiful choices of language, a thoughtful examination of family and racial/ethnic history, and raised questions about grief and mourning in ways somewhat different than what I had considered before. It’s an excellent book and one I highly recommend for readers of memoir.
Kat Chow’s mother passed away when she was a child, leaving her alone to finish growing up with her father, her sisters having already left home. However, her mother is always there, haunting Kat as she encounters the rest of her life as both woman and a Chinese-American growing up in the world.
This is a beautifully written memoir. Chow has done a remarkable job of stitching together generations of loss which affect the mourning and memory of her present family. Although the most obvious ghost is her mother, Chow also seems to create a ghost of Chinese exclusion from American life. Racism, and its abstract and concrete effects, are always an undercurrent to the family story. The continued haunting of multiple entities makes for a complex examination of how one loss raises many specters.
This particular memoir didn’t do anything that astounded me, or struck me as wholly unique or creative. Yet, it contained beautiful choices of language, a thoughtful examination of family and racial/ethnic history, and raised questions about grief and mourning in ways somewhat different than what I had considered before. It’s an excellent book and one I highly recommend for readers of memoir.
tostitos's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
finally finished this book after 4 months. not because it was bad, but because every time i read this book i would inevitably cry, so i couldn’t read it in public at all. this was such a beautifully written book about grief, family, and the chinese-american experience. it hit way too close to home for me having nearly parallel experiences, and in a way it was healing for me to read. i think this is a book i will come back to a lot. thank you kat chow for writing this ❤️
moorea's review against another edition
5.0
this was so beautiful and incredible as an audiobook. Such an incredible job of evoking such difficult emotions
niksasali's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.5
I wanted to like this more. I appreciate the family history bits but it was just too much about death for me