Seeing ghosts : a memoir
(Book)

"Born into a family shaped indelibly by loss, Kat Chow always had an unusual preoccupation with death. As a child, she was plagued by fears of her parents' untimely demise - especially her mother's. A vivacious and mischievous woman, Kat's mother would joke that when she died, she's like to be stuffed and displayed in Kat's future apartment, her taxidermic self always watching over her. This ghostly image would haunt Kat after her mother's unexpected death from cancer, plunging her, her sisters, and their father in a debilitating, lonely grief. With a voice that is both wry and heartfelt, Kat weaves together what is part ghost story and part excavation of her family's history of loss, spanning three generations as they emigrate from China and Hong Kong to Cuba and America. By looking through the prism of her family's grief, Kat unearths the uncanny parallels in their stories, wrestling with questions about what we each impart to future generations and what we owe our ancestors. Seeing Ghosts asks what it means to reclaim and tell these stories: Is writing an exorcism or is it its own form of preservation? The result is an extraordinary contribution to the literature of the American family. It is a provocative and transformative meditation on what we can gain from absence and who we become when we face loss."--book jacket.