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.
‘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 Díaz, 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.’
*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 cliché.’
*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*
‘In this highly innovative memoir, Lin shares her experiences as a
person with bipolar disorder as she comes of age, marries,
experiences a miscarriage, loses her father to cancer, and becomes
a mother … 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 organised into a four-part narrative structure drawn from
Japanese literary tradition. The book is richly illustrated by the
author’s sister, Cori Nakamura Lin. An engrossing memoir by an
extraordinary debut author.’
*Library Journal, starred review*
‘“In the presence of a story … time collapses. This is why I am
always telling it.” So begins Lin’s memoir-cum-bestiary, a
narrative of discovering her bipolar disorder, the struggle to
start a family, and her beloved father’s death and its aftermath.
Along the way, she tells stories of the yōkai, the liminal,
ambiguous, supernatural creatures of Japanese folk and fairy tale,
in the legends of which Lin finds parallels to her family’s
experience of colonisation, trauma, immigration, and community.
Illustrated in dreamy gouache and watercolour by Cori Nakamura Lin,
the author’s sister, The Night Parade explores the many ways we —
humans as individuals, humans in community — use stories to make
sense of our lives. When calamity strikes, as in every life it
must, the tales of the yōkai tell us why and how we can keep it
from happening again. “To prevent disaster,” Lin writes, “worship
the thing that eats you.” Heartfelt and thoughtful, this painfully
lovely memoir will appeal to readers of Carmen Maria Machado’s In
the Dream House and Sabrina Imbler’s How Far the Light
Reaches.’
*Booklist*
‘Lin’s braiding of personal experience and cultural touchstones
make this memoir very special.’
*Los Angeles Times*
‘This genre-bending and emotionally resonant memoir offers a
masterfully braided narrative of Lin’s experience with mental
illness, the death of her father, the grieving process, and
Japanese, Taiwanese, and Okinawan legends to interrogate the very
notion of recovery. The result is a deeply textured portrait of the
experiences that haunt us and the ways in which we can begin to
feel whole again.’
*Chicago Review of Books*
‘Beautiful and bizarre … explode[s] conventional narratives of
mental illness and grief … weaves together fable and memory,
research, and family history with elegance and honesty to create a
singular record of family, diaspora, art, and belonging.’
*Chicago Magazine*
‘Based on a traditional Japanese narrative structure, this riveting
speculative memoir by Jami Nakamura Lin is accompanied by the
luminous illustrations of her sister, Cori. Grappling with themes
of family, neurodivergence, illness, and identity, Nakamura Lin
presents a nuanced, raw, and poetic redefinition of memoir.’
*Ms. magazine*
‘Before you even get to the first chapter, you’ll be stunned by the
beauty of this hardback, and the illustrations by the author’s
sister, Cori Nakamura Lin … Lin offers remarkable insight, her
academic understanding of both illness and narrative informing an
unusually keen self-awareness. Her experience of mental illness
defies the story we’re comfortable with, and she doesn’t shy away
from that. Using the traditional Japanese narrative structure (four
acts), she tells a different story, one that’s perhaps more true
and realistic, but challenging to read at times.’
*Keeping Up With The Penguins*
‘Inventive … Jami Nakamura Lin weaves together threads of memoir
and Japanese and Taiwanese mythology to create a gorgeous mosaic of
family, grief, illness, inheritance, and love.’
*Shondaland*
‘Both heart-wrenching and heart-filling … It’s breathtaking to read
the way [Jami Nakamura Lin] skillfully utilises the Hyakki Yagyo —
a procession of supernatural oni and yokai in Japanese folklore and
mythology — to recontextualise and reconsider narratives of grief,
mental illness, and memory-making. This is a book to keep at your
bedside.’
*Conde Nast Traveler*
‘This is a special book. A memoir, but so much more … an
amazing read.’
*Good Reading Magazine*
‘Epic in structure, this is, as much as anything else, a simply
written, often poignant examination of “the things we fear and do
not understand”.’
*The Sydney Morning Herald*
‘The Night Parade turns grief and mental illness into a metaphor
that’s captured in the collective stories of yōkai — the demons,
spirits, and magical apparitions of Japanese folklore. The yōkai
are richly illustrated in the book by Lin’s sister, Cori … The
fantastical inclusions also introduce time travel, so that multiple
timelines can run parallel in ways that more accurately represent
the pandemonium of the neurodivergent experience … But Lin’s yōkai
only partly function as metaphor for her mental illness. They have
just as much, or maybe more, to say about identity,
intergenerational trauma and inheritance. The metaphor, like the
experience of mental illness, is deeply tangled with the body, with
community, with the structures that determine our fates.’
*Kill Your Darlings*
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