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“In 2016, I entered a personal Dark Night of the Soul,” Alexandra A. Chan explains. She had lost a beloved father, plus the external world bombarded her with Covid-19, Trumpism, devastating natural catastrophes, and a rise of violence against Black people. Chan began her journey towards healing and individuation using meditation, recalling family stories, learning traditional Chinese art, and connecting with the myths in her personal and the collective unconscious. Chan’s story of her five year journey is informed by the Chinese astrological calendar.

Chan shares her family history. Her grandfather’s progressive politics garnered a death sentence, so he fled China for America. Her brilliant father, whose career was capped by his ethnicity. Her parents’ love story, told in wartime letters. The pages are filled with family photographs. She probes the intergenerational trauma that was passed down.

“Logos” can tell you where you are, Chan ends, but it is mythos that tells you how and where to go from there. Trust the journey. It will bring you home.

Chan offers an alternative way out of darkness, not through medication or logic, but by tapping into the spiritual, probing the unconscious, and finding expression through art and storytelling.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through Bookish.… (plus d'informations)

I really enjoyed this book. It’s a beautiful patchwork of memories, stories, culture, quotes, tangents, art, photography, poetry, and history. It’s also a dedicated ode to the life of an extraordinary person. My favorite thing about this book is the author’s calligraphy. Learning about the process and her works and getting to see so many pieces was wonderful and unusual in a memoir. I loved how much the author wove art into the book. I also liked learning about her father, who is a central point in the author’s life and in this memoir. As a centenarian, the man had a rich and diverse life full of myriad accomplishments and achievements. It was fascinating to see how many different things a person could accomplish in his life. I also liked the way the author highlighted that this is what it looks like to not sleepwalk through life. I liked the way the book weaved in and out of memories juxtaposed with essay-like vignettes on many various topics. Sometimes I didn’t really connect with the voice of the author. But then other times, I would be super engrossed in a section and not be able to put it down. It really felt like a quilt of bits and pieces of a person’s being tied together in homage. Unique, lovely. Not a favorite but worth the read.… (plus d'informations)

In ranking the memoirs that I have read in the past, "In The Garden Behind The Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic" by Alexandra A. Chan, definitely falls into the #1 category! The memoir is extremely well written and had me engaged from the first page to the last. Ms. Chan, a wife, mother, archaeologist and author takes the reader through the grief she suffered during her mother's lengthy illness and her eventual demise, and the slow decline and death of her father. The memoir focuses mainly on her father, Robert Earl Chan. I believe that Ms. Chan loved her parents equally. However, her mother died when she was still young, leaving her father to continue raising her on his own. His storytelling and myths that were passed down to her, had a profound impact that led to this amazing memoir. The family photos and artwork throughout this memoir also provided a better understanding of Ms. Chan's journey. Definitely a worthwhile read!… (plus d'informations)

expected Pub date May 28, 2024

*reviewed from uncorrected ARC courtesy of publisher via BookishFirst*

nonfiction/autobiographical essays - Mixed race artist/poet/writer (mother was white, father was half Chinese and half mixed white/Black) contemplates her existence through meditation and occasionally tells entertaining stories.

I enjoyed some of this book but other parts not so much--I liked the storytelling in the prologue and the various memories and stories about the author's dad and family. I didn't care for the purple prose descriptions of the author's meditative dreams and though I could kind of understand what she was trying to say, I found it hard to relate to her philosophical discussions of being "in the wasteland" through her multiple vacations/world travels (Austria, Spain, Iceland, Egypt--though oddly NOT China despite her otherwise apparently keen interest into this part of her heritage). The things that would have made her relatable--grief, remembering her parents, being a mother/wife/daughter while trying to deal with these other things, etc., weren't really discussed in a real way for me. (I also found it a little curious that she doesn't really mention any struggles in trying to raise two small boys during the COVID pandemic, it's as though she had a nanny to take care of all that stuff but didn't want to mention it, or perhaps that the chaos of 2020 didn't fit neatly into the qualities you would expect in the year of the rat.)

I also might have liked this more if I were into angels/miracles, but I wasn't into all of the special "signs" that her late father kept sending her seemingly whenever she asked for one (which was very often). I am not opposed to an occasional encounter with a spirit (one where the newly deceased visits their loved ones in a dream seems to be fairly common in Chinese culture), or in believing that a loved one can still watch over you in their afterlife, but having so many "signs" happen this often just seemed like confirmation bias. Maybe Bob Chan is just that kind of spirit, to send 3 or 4 signs at a time instead of just one, but it still seemed a bit overkill.

I do think the author is very smart, as is the rest of her family, and that she has a lot to contribute (her artwork in the full-color preview that I saw is really lovely), but the text as a whole just wasn't working for me. I would suggest cutting most of the philosophizing bits out (poetic meditations put me to sleep, and not in a good way), or editing it down and hiding it into a preface or something that readers can just skip so that they can make it past page 12 without being sorely tempted to DNF.… (plus d'informations)