First published 2019
Julie Yip-Williams faces terminal metastatic colon cancer at thirty-seven with two young daughters at home. Born blind in Vietnam, she escaped her grandmother's attempt at euthanasia and fled with her family on a crowded refugee boat to Hong Kong, then America. A UCLA surgeon restored partial sight. She built a life she never thought possible: Harvard law degree, marriage, children, career. Now cancer changes everything. Julie writes to make sense of dying young. She explores motherhood while terminally ill, her immigrant journey, marriage under extreme stress, and the body's rebellion. She writes about tennis and fortune-tellers, grief and reincarnation, jealousy and comfort. The book becomes her way through an experience that offers no roadmap. Julie writes with humor and anger, refusing to romanticize death or suffering. She creates a guide for living fully while confronting mortality. Her chronicle grows beyond what she imagined when she started. This becomes her final gift: a story that transforms approaching death into an urgent call for others to live with greater intensity and honesty.
Genres: family-life, memoir, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, grief
Setting: Vietnam, Hong Kong, America, UCLA
Period: 21st-century
315 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: terminal-illness