'At once a medical memoir ... and a reflection on mythology - the personal, the collective, the inherited - The Night Parade moves with courage ... Jami Nakamura Lin's speculative memoir is a feat of storytelling; one that I found deeply moving.'
-- Katie Goh
'The Night Parade is a stunning excavation of personal and collective histories, filled with the endless alchemy of storytelling. Jami Nakamura Lin writes with meditative precision and expansive empathy, challenging and reaffirming what communal stories can make possible. Exploring the many worlds that flourish beyond certain knowledge, this boundary-blurring memoir finds power in the undefinable. It reveals to us that the fracturing of a story can be beautifully fruitful. Teeming with language that is transformative and fully embodied, and gorgeously illustrated by Cori Nakamura Lin, The Night Parade is a generous and abundant feast for our living and our dead, our salvaged lineages, and our continuing stories.'
-- K-Ming Chang, award-winning author of
Bestiary'Jami Nakamura Lin has reinvented the genre of memoir, weaving an intricate braid of fable, memory, art, cultural legacy, and legend into a gorgeous tapestry of the stories that made her. The haunting illustrations by her sister, Cori Nakamura Lin, are a potent reminder that no one is self-authored. We all collaborate to become ourselves. Serpentine, polyphonic, and stunningly textured, The Night Parade positively pulses with life.'
-- Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, award-winning author of
The Fact of A Body'A gorgeous invocation of the magic-haunted spaces between lived experience and folkloric traditions, between the living and the dead, between memory and story. I loved The Night Parade.'
-- Kelly Link, bestselling author of
Get in Trouble'Beautifully written and imaginative, The Night Parade takes speculative nonfiction to new heights. Jami Nakamura Lin is both poet and storyteller, mystic and philosopher, teaching us to see the world differently, to suspend our disbelief, using mythology to interrogate our notions of family, grief, fear, love, and belonging. There is no other book like this - it's truly a stunning and visionary work of art.'
-- Jaquira Diaz, author of
Ordinary Girls: a memoir'Genre-defying and deeply poetic, The Night Parade invites the pandemonium within the personal and mythic to a round table where ancestors and folkloric creatures transform grief, memory, and mental illness into the tangible. Ancient tales and horrific spectres braid throughout Jami Nakamura Lin's life, but will worm your way under your skin, prompting the question: what do we cut out from our lives and histories and what do we let grow with us? Impossible to put down, gut-wrenching, and magical. I cannot think of a writer who has written so personally while acknowledging ancestral and cultural grief with such grace and honesty. A crucial and groundbreaking entry for the literature of the Asian Diaspora and explorations of mental illness.'
-- Sequoia Nagamatsu, author of
How High We Go in the Dark'The Night Parade is stunning - it is haunting and magical and terrifying at once. Deeply intimate, but with a sense of scope that transcends history and genre, I loved stepping into this dream of a memoir, of a shared experience.'
-- Catherine Cho, author of
Inferno'With abundant honesty and tenderness, Jami Nakamura Lin wraps her story in the expansive frameworks of folklore and the mystical, bringing in centuries of storytelling about love and loss, death, illness, and mystery. A moving and notable memoir.'
-- Aimee Bender,
New York Times bestselling author of
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake'In this gorgeous and unique debut memoir, Lin draws on the Japanese myth of the Hyakki Yagyo (the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, in which demons and spirits march through the streets at night) to document her struggles with bipolar disorder and her father's fatal illness ... Throughout, Lin draws on characters from the Hyakki Yagyo (like the hideous, flesh-eating Oni Baba, or the vengeful ghost whale known as Bakekujira) to contextualise and come to terms with her feelings, sometimes using them to personify her ugly emotions, other times using them to interrogate cultural narratives about monstrousness. Interspersed throughout are full-colour illustrations of each creature by her sister, Cori ... The result is a memorable and moving exorcism of the monsters within.'
--
Publishers Weekly, starred review
'Lin uses mythology from her Taiwanese and Japanese heritage to make sense of mental illness, cancer, and pregnancy loss ... Throughout this inventive narrative, Lin takes calculated literary risks, ranging from the use of epistolary forms to experiments with point of view. These risks pay off mightily, coming together in a vulnerable, insightful, and refreshingly original meditation on survival, illness, and grief. A stunning memoir about the stories that make us who we are.'
--
Kirkus Reviews, starred review
'In this debut speculative memoir, Lin isn't afraid of her demons. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager, Lin struggled to manage her illness while caring for her cancer-stricken father. Unhappy with the rose-coloured narratives about recovering from mental illness, she takes a different approach here, leaning into the darkness. Inspired by Japanese, Taiwanese, and Okinawan ghost stories, Lin blends memoir and horror - plus stunning illustrations - to consider what it means to co-exist with anguish.'
* The Millions *
'Highly innovative ... Using Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese folklore to enrich her story, the author (who is a Japanese Taiwanese Okinawan American) delves into her own powerful feelings of rage, despair, loss, and hurt, ultimately emerging from each experience stronger and with more insight into not only herself but also her complex family history. With compelling prose, this title weaves folktales about frightening and monstrous figures into the narratives of Lin's own developing bipolar disorder, her lineage, and her father's illness. Her gorgeous writing draws readers into her gripping story, which is organized into a four-part narrative structure drawn from Japanese literary tradition. The book is richly illustrated by the author's sister, Cori Nakamura Lin. VERDICT An engrossing memoir by an extraordinary debut author.'
-- Rebecca Maugridge * Library Journal, starred review *
'Part personal narrative, part mythical taxonomy, The Night Parade intertwines Nakamura Lin's lifelong experience of bipolar disorder with figures from Japanese and Taiwanese myth, resulting in a moody, unusual, and compassionate portrait of a struggle too often reduced to cliche.'
* The Boston Globe *
'In an extraordinary exploration of life in all its stages, debut memoirist Jami Nakamura Lin turns to the monsters of Japanese and Taiwanese folklore to better understand her own mental illness, the death of her father and the birth of her child. Featuring illustrations of these fantastical beasts by the author's sister Cori Nakamura Lin, this book is an abundant feast for our living and our dead, according to ... author K-Ming Chang.'
* San Francisco Chronicle *
