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240 reviews for:
Do ostatnich dni. Zapis życia, choroby i wszystkiego, co przychodzi później
Julie Yip-Williams
3.99 AVERAGE
240 reviews for:
Do ostatnich dni. Zapis życia, choroby i wszystkiego, co przychodzi później
Julie Yip-Williams
3.99 AVERAGE
challenging
sad
medium-paced
NOTE: Contains discussions about terminal illness.
This is the memoir of the year for me. I know it is a bold statement to make considering it is only March and there are nine more months still to go, but I just loved this memoir by Julie Yip-Williams. This memoir spoke to me on so many levels. Yip-Williams was a mother of two young girls, a wife, a lawyer, an immigrant (with an unbelievable story), and one of those unlucky people who are struck with cancer.
Her memoir is unlike anything I have read. The complete rawness and vulnerability she displays throughout her memoir was confronting, but also a relief to read. There was no pretending to be brave or heroic. Yip-Williams was all those things, but there was no pretense about it. As someone who lost their father to bowel cancer, the same disease that affected Yip-Williams, I felt a relief in reading Yip-Williams angry outbursts at cancer, fate, the gods (all of them!), and the hopelessness of it all. She hates the woman who will become her husband’s new wife. She screams and cries at how unfair it is that she will not see her children grow up. This raw honesty was a force that filled me when I was reading her memoir and it made me feel so much peace to know that I wasn’t the only one who would gladly kill cancer if it ever took corporeal form.
Yip-Williams memoir is a love letter and testimony of her life not just for her husband and children, but for anyone who has list a parent or loved-one to cancer. Her anger brought me strange relief and made me cry for loss of everything all over again. There was a shared experience that made me feel like if Yip-Williams were still alive she would be crying and wanting to throw things right along side with me.
Yip-Williams life, like anyone’s life, is more than the illness that takes them. Yip-Williams harrowing and almost unbelievable story of being born almost blind and escaping death as a baby to then later immigrate from Vietnam to the U.S. is honestly the stuff of Hollywood film plots. Her extraordinary life is a testament to her character, will power, and light that came from within. It is something that you feel in her words throughout her memoir and it is something that has stayed with me long after I finished her memoir.
Her memoir made me cry. A lot. Like, snot monster ugly crying that rips your heart from your chest kinda cry. And I don’t look at this as negative at all. Reading Yip-Williams memoir made me feel less alone. It gave me hope and comfort. It gave me strength to keep living, which is something that Yip-Williams talks about in her memoir: it is those who have to keep on living after someone has died that have to continue the struggle.
Cancer touches everyone in its path. It is something that doesn’t go away after a person has died from the disease. It lingers in the memories and hearts of those left behind. It sneaks into your thoughts before you go to bed and in moments of happiness and sadness cancer is somehow still there to remind you what has been lost. In memoirs like Yip-Williams, however, it shows that cancer is only a small part of who we really are; whether that’s survivor or one of the fallen. Yip-Williams memoir showed me that even after almost eight years without my father I can still miss him so intensely and that the hurt and pain can feel as real as if he died yesterday. Yet her memoir also filled me a great and describable comfort. Her legacy is in her children, her husband, her family, and also in her powerful words.
It is only early days and this is one of my favourite memoirs of 2019. What nonfiction are you loving at the moment? Please let me know if you pick up a copy of Yip-Williams memoir. As always, share the reading love.
https://bound2books.co/2019/03/27/the-unwinding-of-the-miracle-a-memoir-for-anyone-who-has-been-touched-by-cancer/
This is the memoir of the year for me. I know it is a bold statement to make considering it is only March and there are nine more months still to go, but I just loved this memoir by Julie Yip-Williams. This memoir spoke to me on so many levels. Yip-Williams was a mother of two young girls, a wife, a lawyer, an immigrant (with an unbelievable story), and one of those unlucky people who are struck with cancer.
Her memoir is unlike anything I have read. The complete rawness and vulnerability she displays throughout her memoir was confronting, but also a relief to read. There was no pretending to be brave or heroic. Yip-Williams was all those things, but there was no pretense about it. As someone who lost their father to bowel cancer, the same disease that affected Yip-Williams, I felt a relief in reading Yip-Williams angry outbursts at cancer, fate, the gods (all of them!), and the hopelessness of it all. She hates the woman who will become her husband’s new wife. She screams and cries at how unfair it is that she will not see her children grow up. This raw honesty was a force that filled me when I was reading her memoir and it made me feel so much peace to know that I wasn’t the only one who would gladly kill cancer if it ever took corporeal form.
Yip-Williams memoir is a love letter and testimony of her life not just for her husband and children, but for anyone who has list a parent or loved-one to cancer. Her anger brought me strange relief and made me cry for loss of everything all over again. There was a shared experience that made me feel like if Yip-Williams were still alive she would be crying and wanting to throw things right along side with me.
Yip-Williams life, like anyone’s life, is more than the illness that takes them. Yip-Williams harrowing and almost unbelievable story of being born almost blind and escaping death as a baby to then later immigrate from Vietnam to the U.S. is honestly the stuff of Hollywood film plots. Her extraordinary life is a testament to her character, will power, and light that came from within. It is something that you feel in her words throughout her memoir and it is something that has stayed with me long after I finished her memoir.
Her memoir made me cry. A lot. Like, snot monster ugly crying that rips your heart from your chest kinda cry. And I don’t look at this as negative at all. Reading Yip-Williams memoir made me feel less alone. It gave me hope and comfort. It gave me strength to keep living, which is something that Yip-Williams talks about in her memoir: it is those who have to keep on living after someone has died that have to continue the struggle.
Cancer touches everyone in its path. It is something that doesn’t go away after a person has died from the disease. It lingers in the memories and hearts of those left behind. It sneaks into your thoughts before you go to bed and in moments of happiness and sadness cancer is somehow still there to remind you what has been lost. In memoirs like Yip-Williams, however, it shows that cancer is only a small part of who we really are; whether that’s survivor or one of the fallen. Yip-Williams memoir showed me that even after almost eight years without my father I can still miss him so intensely and that the hurt and pain can feel as real as if he died yesterday. Yet her memoir also filled me a great and describable comfort. Her legacy is in her children, her husband, her family, and also in her powerful words.
It is only early days and this is one of my favourite memoirs of 2019. What nonfiction are you loving at the moment? Please let me know if you pick up a copy of Yip-Williams memoir. As always, share the reading love.
https://bound2books.co/2019/03/27/the-unwinding-of-the-miracle-a-memoir-for-anyone-who-has-been-touched-by-cancer/
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
Brutally honest and insightful. Her story is remarkable from birth to death, but I could not read every paragraph. I found the book repetitive enough to skip whole passages.
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I had a hard time connecting with the author on a personal level.
Beautiful and heartbreaking. A girl born blind in Vietnam grows up to be a Harvard educated lawyer living in NYC. In her early 40s, when her two daughters are <6yo, she is diagnosed with cancer and given a finite time to live. She writes this memoir, primarily for her children, which was published 1yr after her death.
Oddly, as a 25yo woman, many sentiments of the memoir and atributes of Julie Yip-Williams deeply resonated with me. As a young woman, Julie solo-traveled to all seven continents, and throughout her life had a striking independence. When reflecting on her impending death, Yip-Williams never avoided masking her true emotions and accounted a wide range of reactions she had during her last years. For me, the memoir’s biggest take-away was the way she viewed her death as the “unwinding of the miracle” and how death is the ultimate solo-travel adventure.
Oddly, as a 25yo woman, many sentiments of the memoir and atributes of Julie Yip-Williams deeply resonated with me. As a young woman, Julie solo-traveled to all seven continents, and throughout her life had a striking independence. When reflecting on her impending death, Yip-Williams never avoided masking her true emotions and accounted a wide range of reactions she had during her last years. For me, the memoir’s biggest take-away was the way she viewed her death as the “unwinding of the miracle” and how death is the ultimate solo-travel adventure.
Any book I read like this is now pretty much always going to be compared to "When Breath Becomes Air" - and since I read and loved WBBA and I didn't feel as much affection for this book then I will say it wasn't as good. Is that fair to say? It's not that I remember passages of WBBA that I just loved and re-read- it might have been the novelty of it or just the fact that I remember reading that book and finding it to be like poetry - but this book wasn't as great. I did love the final passage where she talked about how she hoped her husband wouldn't just fall in love with someone because it was convenient and easier to have someone as a partner to help take care of the mundane day to day aspects of life but rather she hoped that her husband truly mourned and learned to handle the difficult things solo because then she knew that when he found love again it was true love. Not a love for convenience but a love that wasn't based on making him feel whole again rather he had learned to be whole on his own. I'm not describing it well - but it was powerful and kind. But really - if you are going to read one of these "i know that i'm dying" books -read WBBA. You can absolutely read this one too - but WBBA is better. I think I may have liked this better if it would have been presented more chronologically as opposed to various essays.