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A review by reading_rainbow_with_chris
Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow
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.