Review | Julie Yip-Williams’ memoir Unwinding of the Miracle reveals how to live, and die, with dignity
- From her start as a blind Vietnamese refugee to realising the American dream, the lawyer’s life and untimely death at 42 is laid bare
- Author documents the ugly emotions summoned by cancer and the surprising joys that dying can bring
The Unwinding of the Miracle
by Julie Yip-Williams
Random House
Julie Yip-Williams’ memoir about dying from cancer is as brutally honest as it is beautifully written. With the typical frankness of a Chinese mother, she lays out everything, from the worry and heartbreak of leaving her two children behind to graphic descriptions of bodily functions and medical procedures. The Unwinding of the Miracle is written as a posthumous letter to her husband and daughters, Mia and Isabelle. But, really, it is a letter to us all.
“This story begins at the ending. Which means that if you are here, then I am not. But it’s okay. My life was good and my life was complete,” she writes in the prologue.
“Dying has taught me a great deal about living.”
A blind child refugee from Vietnam, Yip-Williams achieved a life she never could have imagined. By her 30s, she had become an Ivy League-educated lawyer with a New York apartment, an American husband and two bright little girls.
