The Night Parade

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In a groundbreaking tradition, this lyrical memoir draws on the Japanese myth of the Hyakki Yagyō — the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons — to reshape the narrative around mental illness, grief, and remembrance. Jami Nakamura Lin, a Japanese Taiwanese American woman with undiagnosed bipolar disorder, grappled with feelings of monstrosity throughout her life. Her adolescence was marked by extreme rage, self-medicating, and a complex relationship with her father, all exacerbated by her mental health struggles. Rejecting the conventional mental illness memoir that typically concludes with a neat resolution, Lin finds solace in the folklore of her childhood, where terrifying supernatural creatures roam the night. Through the lens of yōkai and East Asian mythology, she challenges Western ideas of conflict and resolution, exploring grief, loss, and the fear of difference that shapes identity. Structured in four acts reflecting traditional Japanese narrative, this memoir features stunning watercolor illustrations and offers an innovative, genre-bending exploration of Lin's experiences. By intertwining her mental health journey, her father's death, and haunting themes with folkloric tradition, the work illuminates dark corners in search of a new understanding: How do we learn to coexist with the things that haunt us?