REVIEW : Seeing Ghosts / Kat Chow
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Seeing Ghosts
Kat Chow
Grand Central
Review by
Amanda Nava
Life can be defined by grief, how we seek out ways to summon the deceased. Looking for them in strangers, preserving every scrap of clothing, hiding bills with their name under the bed, dragging their furniture across state lines, and prying memories of the dead from family/friends.
Seeing Ghosts–the new memoir by Kat Chow–asks the reader “What do we owe to our families in our grief, and how does it shape us?” This memoir sings to the souls who lost parental figures growing up and could never move past their grief. The nonlinear format jumps between Chow’s memories as they collide and connect, enhancing the disjointed and often regressive nature of mourning.
Chow’s mother was diagnosed with cancer two weeks before her death. The whirlwind of experience shook 13-year-old Chow, who felt alone in her grief. Years after her mother’s death, she still asks her father and sisters to confirm her memories, to dive into her mother’s life. She’s met with confusion and worry as if she shouldn’t be as sad seeing as so much time has passed. She’s often met with one of her father’s classic responses: “it is what it is” or “what can you do?” During her childhood, her father lost himself in his latest passion projects.
As Chow’s grief matures, it becomes clear that different family members are haunted by other ghosts—and sometimes different versions of the same spirit. In life, everyone has one big death that changes everything.
This book is a record of Chow’s memories and lineage, which has been lost and obscured one too many times. In the last part of the book, Chow begins to absorb her father: his phrasing, movements, and silhouette. She realizes she’s preparing herself for the inevitable: her father’s death and, consequently, her next wave of grief and loss.
Chow centers her family and their story. Readers follow the Chow family across the world as they chase their ghosts, trying to put them to rest.
Her mother was haunted by her son’s death who only lived a few hours: Jonathan Love Chow. Chow’s father is arguably the most haunted of the Chow family. Chow’s dad never had a relationship with his own father after he emigrated to Cuba for work. Chow’s grandfather died in Cuba and his body remained there, lost like so many Chinese workers during the Cuban revolution. This is the first ghost for Chow’s father and not his last. Her father’s preoccupation with his father’s absence and missing body affects his emotional journey and ultimately shapes how Chow maneuvers the world. By sheer proximity, Chow’s grandfather becomes her ghost because its presence takes up so much space in her father’s life.
Chow’s grief is heavily tied with mediumship: hauntings, ghosts, exorcism, etc. An obsession with death often causes one to explore various forms of mediumship. One seeks a loved one who is no longer here. The practice and existence of this book is a summoning. It is the attempt to converse, bargain, and find solace over one’s departed. Chow captures her family’s ghosts on the page before setting them free.
Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow is out now from Grand Central Publishing
Amanda Nava is a writer living in California.
