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The Night Parade

a speculative memoir

ebook
83 of 83 copies available
83 of 83 copies available

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 Yagyō — 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 yōkai 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?

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 2, 2023
      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. Organizing her tale into a traditional Japanese four-act structure, Lin recounts an adolescence marked by debilitating rage and depression, which led to feelings of shame at appearing “monstrous” to herself and others. After a voluntary admission to the psych ward at 17, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Eventually, Lin learned to regulate the disorder, married, and had a child, though her happiness was undercut by the agony of watching her father’s struggle against the cancer that eventually killed him. 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 contextualize 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-color illustrations of each creature by her sister, Cori. “The story is a different story,” Lin writes of the mythic yardstick she uses to process her own tragedies; “The story is the same story.” The result is a memorable and moving exorcism of the monsters within.

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  • OverDrive Read
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Languages

  • English

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