Overview

In the groundbreaking tradition of In the Dream House and The Collected Schizophrenias, a gorgeously illustrated lyrical memoir that draws upon the Japanese myth of the Hyakki Yagyo - the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons - to shift the cultural narrative around mental illness, grief, and remembrance. 'Are these the only two stories? The one where you defeat your monster, and the other where you succumb to it?' Jami Nakamura Lin spent much of her life feeling monstrous for reasons outside of her control. As a Japanese Taiwanese American woman with undiagnosed bipolar disorder, her adolescence was marked by periods of extreme rage and self-medicating, an ever-evolving array of psychiatric treatments, and her relationships with those she loved - especially her father - suffered as a result. Frustrated with the tidy arc of the typical mental illness memoir, the kind whose trajectory leads toward being 'better', Lin sought comfort in the Japanese folklore she'd loved as a child, tales of supernatural creatures known to terrify in the night. Through the lens of the yokai and other East Asian mythology, she set out to interrogate the Western notion of conflict and resolution, grief, loss, mental illness, and the myriad ways fear of difference shapes who we are as a people. Divided into four acts in the traditional Japanese narrative structure and featuring stunning watercolour illustrations, Jami Nakamura Lin has crafted an innovative, genre-bending, and deeply emotional memoir that mirrors the sensation of being caught between worlds. Braiding her experience of mental illness, the death of her father, and other haunted topics with the folkloric tradition, The Night Parade shines a light into dark corners in search of a new way, driven by the question- How do we learn to live with the things that haunt us? '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

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9781914484070

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Reviews

‘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 <em>Bestiary</em> ‘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 <em>The Fact of A Body</em> ‘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 <em>Get in Trouble</em> ‘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 Díaz, author of <em>Ordinary Girls: a memoir</em> ‘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 <em>How High We Go in the Dark</em> ‘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 <em>Inferno</em> ‘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, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake</em> ‘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.’ -- <i>Kirkus Reviews</i>, 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 *

‘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 <em>Bestiary</em> ‘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 <em>The Fact of A Body</em> ‘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 <em>Get in Trouble</em> ‘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 Díaz, author of <em>Ordinary Girls: a memoir</em> ‘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 <em>How High We Go in the Dark</em>

Author Information

Jami Nakamura Lin (Author) Jami Nakamura Lin is a Japanese Taiwanese Okinawan American author based outside Chicago. She is a former Catapult essay columnist, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Passages North, and other publications. She is a 2022 Sustainable Arts Foundation finalist and her work was shortlisted for the 2021 Chicago Review of Books Awards. She received her MFA in nonfiction from the Pennsylvania State University. Cori Nakamura Lin (Translator) Cori Nakamura Lin is a Japanese Taiwanese American illustrator and designer specialising in culture-centered storytelling and radical information sharing. Her work has been published in the LA Times, Eater Chicago, WBEZ Curious City Chicago, PBS Learning Media, the Twin Cities Daily Planet, and has been featured on the History Channel.

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