In the groundbreaking tradition of In the Dream House and The Collected Schizophrenias, a gorgeously illustrated lyrical memoir that draws upon the Japanese myth of the Hyakki Yagyō — the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons — to shift the cultural narrative around mental illness, grief, and remembrance.

Are these the only two stories? The one where you defeat your monster, and the other where you succumb to it?

Jami Nakamura Lin spent much of her life feeling monstrous for reasons outside of her control. As a Japanese Taiwanese American woman with undiagnosed bipolar disorder, her adolescence was marked by periods of extreme rage and self-medicating, an ever-evolving array of psychiatric treatments, and her relationships with those she loved — especially her father — suffered as a result.

Frustrated with the tidy arc of the typical mental illness memoir, the kind whose trajectory leads toward being ‘better’, Lin sought comfort in the Japanese folklore she’d loved as a child, tales of supernatural creatures known to terrify in the night. Through the lens of the yōkai and other East Asian mythology, she set out to interrogate the Western notion of conflict and resolution, grief, loss, mental illness, and the myriad ways fear of difference shapes who we are as a people.

Divided into four acts in the traditional Japanese narrative structure and featuring stunning watercolour illustrations, Jami Nakamura Lin has crafted an innovative, genre-bending, and deeply emotional memoir that mirrors the sensation of being caught between worlds. Braiding her experience of mental illness, the death of her father, and other haunted topics with the folkloric tradition, The Night Parade shines a light into dark corners in search of a new way, driven by the question: How do we learn to live with the things that haunt us?

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‘In this debut speculative memoir, Lin isn’t afraid of her demons. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager, Lin struggled to manage her illness while caring for her cancer-stricken father. Unhappy with the rose-coloured narratives about recovering from mental illness, she takes a different approach here, leaning into the darkness. Inspired by Japanese, Taiwanese, and Okinawan ghost stories, Lin blends memoir and horror — plus stunning illustrations — to consider what it means to co-exist with anguish.’

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‘Highly innovative ... Using Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese folklore to enrich her story, the author (who is a Japanese Taiwanese Okinawan American) delves into her own powerful feelings of rage, despair, loss, and hurt, ultimately emerging from each experience stronger and with more insight into not only herself but also her complex family history. With compelling prose, this title weaves folktales about frightening and monstrous figures into the narratives of Lin’s own developing bipolar disorder, her lineage, and her father’s illness. Her gorgeous writing draws readers into her gripping story, which is organized into a four-part narrative structure drawn from Japanese literary tradition. The book is richly illustrated by the author’s sister, Cori Nakamura Lin. VERDICT An engrossing memoir by an extraordinary debut author.’

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‘Part personal narrative, part mythical taxonomy, The Night Parade intertwines Nakamura Lin’s lifelong experience of bipolar disorder with figures from Japanese and Taiwanese myth, resulting in a moody, unusual, and compassionate portrait of a struggle too often reduced to cliché.’

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‘In an extraordinary exploration of life in all its stages, debut memoirist Jami Nakamura Lin turns to the monsters of Japanese and Taiwanese folklore to better understand her own mental illness, the death of her father and the birth of her child. Featuring illustrations of these fantastical beasts by the author’s sister Cori Nakamura Lin, this book is an “abundant feast for our living and our dead”, according to … author K-Ming Chang.’

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‘“In the presence of a story … time collapses. This is why I am always telling it.” So begins Lin’s memoir-cum-bestiary, a narrative of discovering her bipolar disorder, the struggle to start a family, and her beloved father’s death and its aftermath. Along the way, she tells stories of the yōkai, the liminal, ambiguous, supernatural creatures of Japanese folk and fairy tale, in the legends of which Lin finds parallels to her family’s experience of colonisation, trauma, immigration, and community. Illustrated in dreamy gouache and watercolour by Cori Nakamura Lin, the author’s sister, The Night Parade explores the many ways we — humans as individuals, humans in community — use stories to make sense of our lives. When calamity strikes, as in every life it must, the tales of the yōkai tell us why and how we can keep it from happening again. “To prevent disaster,” Lin writes, “worship the thing that eats you.” Heartfelt and thoughtful, this painfully lovely memoir will appeal to readers of Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House and Sabrina Imbler’s How Far the Light Reaches.’

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‘Lin’s braiding of personal experience and cultural touchstones make this memoir very special.’

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‘This genre-bending and emotionally resonant memoir offers a masterfully braided narrative of Lin’s experience with mental illness, the death of her father, the grieving process, and Japanese, Taiwanese, and Okinawan legends to interrogate the very notion of recovery. The result is a deeply textured portrait of the experiences that haunt us and the ways in which we can begin to feel whole again.’

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‘Beautiful and bizarre … explode[s] conventional narratives of mental illness and grief … weaves together fable and memory, research, and family history with elegance and honesty to create a singular record of family, diaspora, art, and belonging.’

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‘Based on a traditional Japanese narrative structure, this riveting speculative memoir by Jami Nakamura Lin is accompanied by the luminous illustrations of her sister, Cori. Grappling with themes of family, neurodivergence, illness, and identity, Nakamura Lin presents a nuanced, raw, and poetic redefinition of memoir.’

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‘Before you even get to the first chapter, you’ll be stunned by the beauty of this hardback, and the illustrations by the author’s sister, Cori Nakamura Lin … Lin offers remarkable insight, her academic understanding of both illness and narrative informing an unusually keen self-awareness. Her experience of mental illness defies the story we’re comfortable with, and she doesn’t shy away from that. Using the traditional Japanese narrative structure (four acts), she tells a different story, one that’s perhaps more true and realistic, but challenging to read at times.’

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‘Inventive … Jami Nakamura Lin weaves together threads of memoir and Japanese and Taiwanese mythology to create a gorgeous mosaic of family, grief, illness, inheritance, and love.’

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‘Both heart-wrenching and heart-filling … It’s breathtaking to read the way [Jami Nakamura Lin] skillfully utilises the Hyakki Yagyo — a procession of supernatural oni and yokai in Japanese folklore and mythology — to recontextualise and reconsider narratives of grief, mental illness, and memory-making. This is a book to keep at your bedside.’

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‘This is a special book. A memoir, but so much more … an amazing read.’

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‘Epic in structure, this is, as much as anything else, a simply written, often poignant examination of “the things we fear and do not understand”.’

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‘The Night Parade turns grief and mental illness into a metaphor that’s captured in the collective stories of yōkai — the demons, spirits, and magical apparitions of Japanese folklore. The yōkai are richly illustrated in the book by Lin’s sister, Cori … The fantastical inclusions also introduce time travel, so that multiple timelines can run parallel in ways that more accurately represent the pandemonium of the neurodivergent experience … But Lin’s yōkai only partly function as metaphor for her mental illness. They have just as much, or maybe more, to say about identity, intergenerational trauma and inheritance. The metaphor, like the experience of mental illness, is deeply tangled with the body, with community, with the structures that determine our fates.’