The Night Parade

In this “speculative memoir,” Jami Nakamura Lin uses Japanese, Okinawan, and Taiwanese folklore to illuminate significant life events - her long struggle with bipolar disorder, her miscarriage and then subsequent birth of a daughter, and the loss of her beloved father from cancer at age 57. As folklore changes over time depending on the storyteller and the audience, so does the way Nakamura Lin processes her memories. The presence of demons, gods, and ghosts allows for brief glimpses of her ancestors and the complex dynamics between her three cultures. Each chapter is enriched by modern illustrations of the folktales, created by Jami's sister Cori. The Night Parade can be read fairly quickly, but you will want to linger over the prose, maybe even returning to the previous page to savor its power.

In the presence of a story, if the story is a good one, time collapses. Though throughout the telling, I have worried: what is there to say, there is nothing new t0 say, death and grief are the oldest stories under the sun. But my horror is not of death, where the living and the ones they mourn are irrevocably dispatched to different timelines. It is of the death of memory.