Description
Praise for “Not Contagious—Only Cancer”
In Not Contagious—Only Cancer, Kyong Ah Choi can read body fluids with the skill of a trained coroner. A nurse’s aide in a Skilled Nursing Facility, Kyong Ah tends to every need of her dying patients: decoding their grunts, changing their soiled diapers, and negotiating for their favorite foods. Overworked, underpaid, and without benefits, she is a champion of life, mixing cigarettes, Korean food, and folk medicine to care for others and for herself. In this lively, bittersweet, and comic novel, writer Miriam Ching Yoon Louie plunges us into the breathless momentum of Kyong Ah’s world as she negotiates uneven relationships with her three children, wards off the ghost of her cheating ex-husband, and schemes to manage her illness compromised by systems and insufficient medical care. The dialogue pops with utterances, beneath the breath rumbles, and secret messages to the dead. Not Contagious—Only Cancer drives relentlessly from beginning to end, bringing a satisfying mash-up of pain, love, concern, amusement and compassion. Each of the small chapters drops a seed of wisdom and insight that coalesces into an instructional guide on self-care that allows hope for life and honor for death.
—Elmaz Abinader, author of This House, My Bones
Kyong Ah Choi’s cancer may not be contagious, but the energy and passion in this book telling her story certainly is. Miriam Ching Yoon Louie’s debut novel has it all: vivid, complex characters; snappy dialogue; a full emotional range; laugh-out-loud humor, and even suspense. Breaking the mold with a main character who is simultaneously a nurse’s aide, a philosopher, a worried mother and a dreamer of dreams, Not Contagious takes you on a roller coaster ride from hospital rooms to tattoo parlors and from sex shops to Medicare waiting lines. It’s a roaring tale of life lived to the full at breakneck speed. At the same time it’s a stop-and-reflect exploration of tradition, generational change, the relationship between self-sacrifice and self-preservation, and what human beings go through when face-to-face with the prospect of death. This novel is as satisfying as the Korean comfort food that keeps Kyong Ah going to the very last page.
—Max Elbaum, Editor, Books (and more) by Friends
I first met Miriam through her book Sweatshop Warriors when I was a Women Studies student because we were on the same path–women of color activism, Korean shamanism studies and a passion for justice for “comfort women.” Don’t miss her novel Not Contagious –Only Cancer, an amazing and rare book on life in the diaspora. The protagonist, Kyong Ah, reflects tens of thousands of Asian women. Underprivileged, often in their homelands as well, they end up doing the dirtiest work in foreign countries. Kyong Ah turns this work into a sacred mission by giving deep, loving care to elders. She is not a one dimensional, Asian model minority nor are her children. She is an old, single, health care worker weakened by cancer. Her kids are caught between cultures: a career oriented daughter, a bumming around addict son, and a sexshop worker lesbian daughter. Tattoos and gender identity quests are included. The story evokes the ethos and pathos of diverse cultures within Asian communities and how the reality and politics of care work can destroy people like Kyong Ah. Vivid descriptions of food, hospitals and the process of dying provoke longing and sadness. Yet the story is funny and will make you laugh through your tears.
—Inhui Lee, author of Crossing Over Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Korean Shamanic Ritual for “Comfort Women”
