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Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror by Angela Yuriko Smith, Lee Murray
1 review
sarahbythebook's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of Unquiet Spirits!
If you are looking for an anthology on Asian mythology, this is not the book for you.
If, however, you are interested in a book that explores the experience of women of the Asian diaspora that is framed through Korean, Chinese, Thai, Philippine, Japanese, and other Asian folklore, this is definitely a book you should pick up.
And if this collection teaches you anything, it should be that unquiet spirits are real, just not in the ways we might expect.
I personally want everyone to read Unquiet Spirits. The topics discussed are incredibly timely—the pandemic, women's rights and power, depression, racism—makes this a powerful and moving collection of essays from women across the Asian diaspora grappling with ghosts, both those in fiction and the metaphorical kind. These women who write horror fiction draw connections between the ghosts and spirits of folklore—fox demons, substitute-seekers, the ever hungry ghosts—and demonstrates just how real these creatures are in their day to day life and in their past.
If you are looking for an anthology on Asian mythology, this is not the book for you.
If, however, you are interested in a book that explores the experience of women of the Asian diaspora that is framed through Korean, Chinese, Thai, Philippine, Japanese, and other Asian folklore, this is definitely a book you should pick up.
And if this collection teaches you anything, it should be that unquiet spirits are real, just not in the ways we might expect.
I personally want everyone to read Unquiet Spirits. The topics discussed are incredibly timely—the pandemic, women's rights and power, depression, racism—makes this a powerful and moving collection of essays from women across the Asian diaspora grappling with ghosts, both those in fiction and the metaphorical kind. These women who write horror fiction draw connections between the ghosts and spirits of folklore—fox demons, substitute-seekers, the ever hungry ghosts—and demonstrates just how real these creatures are in their day to day life and in their past.
"Otherness transforms us into scapegoats, witches, dolls, and monsters. For many of us, monster is the label of choice." –Angela Yuiko Smith
As a white woman, there are without a doubt ideas in this book that are inaccessible to me. The racism that these women experienced or watched their parents suffer is not a reality I will know. However, there are other parts of this story that couldn't feel more real to my life and situation that if I'd written it myself (which wouldn't happen because I don't have the talent of these authors). The hunger for dreams you've had to let go of, the anxiety and depression that can hang onto us like a weight, conflicted feelings as we cannibalize some of the best parts of our lives for "progress", the difficulties of navigating a world hostile to the female body and our "sexual vulnerability".
"In her eyes, I see a fox, a spirit that now lives in me. And we're angry. Feral. We want retribution." –Celine Murray
I expected essays more on the subject of how these different authors interpret different kinds of spirits in their fiction, but instead they delivered heartfelt explorations of themselves and their experiences to explain why their respective cultures might have created such unquiet spirits. The authors mix memoir with folklore and advice for readers in captivating essays that are equal parts familiar and new.
"Tap into whatever your culture perceives a madwoman to be and watch the berth you're given widen; watch the leash you're on extend." –Nadia Bulkin
These women also go beyond the traditional undead ghouls we as readers associate with horror. One author includes the Christian idea of the Holy Spirit to explore the role of religious assimilation in immigrant populations. Another uses the yamauba to theorize about the strangeness—especially any deviation off the path toward motherhood— that turns women into witches in society's eyes. This chapter in particular is very poignant for an American reader in light of Roe v. Wade.
"I am reminded that the spirit is not just a silent reminder, a haunting of the awful things that have happened in the past. The spirit is also something that animates us, that moves us to be better and stronger and braver than we are now." –Gabriela Lee
Overall, I'd give this book a rating of 4.5 stars. This book has more lines that I've highlighted because they resonated with me than probably any book I've read in a decade. My only "complaint" (even that feels too harsh) is that there are two essays that stand out as not really jiving with the rest of the collection. Grace Chan's "Holy Revelations" centering on the Holy Spirit feels strange to me in a collection of stories about traditional folklore, but I think the overall point of the essay helps it fit better. "The Agency of Modern Kunoichi" by Tori Eldridge discusses female ninjas, which is incredibly cool but so unlike the rest of the figures of folklore that it doesn't mesh as well with the rest of the essays. It is still wonderfully written, and I want to get the author's novels in the near future. Both of these essays are good in their own right, they just felt somewhat disconnected to the others in terms of their content.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
Moderate: Racism, Death, Gun violence, Sexism, Hate crime, Sexual assault, Domestic abuse, and Rape
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