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Drawing upon the traditional Chinese Daoist and Buddhist concept of hungry ghosts, May-lee Chai writes about personal hauntings, the people, histories, ancestors, and family members who continue to touch her life. Hungry ghosts are spirits that are caught between realms forgotten by their descendants and separated from their ancestors. Yet the Chinese traditional celebration of the Hungry Ghost Festival in the 7th lunar month shows a path forward and a way to heal, when the living can still feed even the hungriest of the wandering spirits in this most egalitarian of holidays. This spiritual practice serves as inspiration in Chai’s writing.
In these 12 reflections and incantations, both new and previously published award-winning works, Chai explores Chinese spiritual traditions, the lunar almanac, exile and the diaspora born of war; weaves family stories with our society at large; examines the legacies of the “women of Nanjing” who were enslaved there by the Japanese military in World War II; and examines the racist fearmongering about Chinese men and white women and how that impacted her own multiracial family. Other topics of this wide-ranging collection include Western European-dominated beauty standards, the rise of authoritarianism in Hong Kong leading to mass migration, the extinction of the Yangzi River dolphin due to climate change, and Chai’s complex relationship with her white mother.
Spanning continents and centuries, My Hungry Ghosts: Essays and Incantations is a collection that speaks to our current political moment with fresh and innovative forms of writing. Chai’s essays provide a lens and path forward for activism and healing.
“My Hungry Ghosts is a stunning collection that weaves together memoir, history, prayer, and intuition. May-lee Chai has a poet’s control of line and image and the essayist's ability to take complex people and situations and make it possible for readers to comfortably sit in nuance. A lovely, thoughtful book!”—Megan Giddings, author of Black Arts: Stories and the novel Lakewood, a double NAACP Image Award finalist
“May-lee Chai’s My Hungry Ghosts: Essays and Incantations is a searching meditation on life, identity, place, and belonging. Her story, a unique yet universal one, moves through geographic displacement, family trauma, war, and the ambient racism that insinuates itself into the lives and psyches of Asian and Asian American neighbors, coworkers, and friends. And still, Chai writes a life once relegated to the margins into the center of selfhood, repair, and restoration—for herself and her family. As Chai pieces together the traumas of both sides of her family, she moves toward self-understanding and full embodiment, finding her way to the only home that is real and true and safe: the one that lives inside of us.”—Deborah Douglas, author of the Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler's Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement and founding co–editor-in-chief of The Emancipator
“My Hungry Ghosts is an insightful, compelling collection of essays that demonstrate how histories driven by war and geopolitical conflict are passed down across generations and borders, how prejudicial traumas evolve across limbs of family trees, the powerful fragmented toll of memory, and the need to define one's own identity as a critical means towards survival.”—José Vadi, author of Inter State: Essays from California and Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder’s Lens
“May-lee Chai is a vital voice, telling authentic Asian American stories with complexity and heart.”—Curtis Chin, author of the national bestseller Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, a Stonewall Honor Book