My Hungry Ghosts

May-lee Chai is the author of twelve books of fiction, nonfiction, and translation including the 2022 short story collection, Tomorrow in Shanghai & Other Stories, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and was longlisted for The Story Prize; and Useful Phrases for Immigrants: Stories, which won a 2019 American Book Award; and her original translation from Chinese to English of the 1934 Autobiography of Ba Jin. She has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman, Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, named a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book, and received an honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Book Awards.She is a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University and a Board Member of the National Book Critics Circle.

“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