Paper Shadows
In 1995, during the publicity tour for his much-acclaimed first novel, The Jade Peony, Wayson Choy received a mysterious phone call from a woman claiming to have just seen his mother on a streetcar. He politely informed the caller that she must be mistaken, since his mother had died long ago. “No, no, not that mother,” the voice insisted. “Your real mother.”
Inspired by the startling realization that, like many children of Chinatown, he had been adopted, Choy constructs a vivid and moving memoir that reveals uncanny similarities between his award-winning first novel and the newly discovered secrets of his Vancouver childhood. From his early experiences with ghosts, through his youthful encounters with cowboys and bachelor uncles, to his…
$21.00
March 6, 2018Wayson Choy's first novel, The Jade Peony, spent six months on The Globe and Mail's national bestseller list, shared the Trillium Book Award for best book in 1995, and won the 1996 City of Vancouver Book Award. All That Matters, a companion novel to The Jade Peony, won the Trillium Book Award in 2004 and was shortlisted for the 2005 Giller Prize. In 1999, Choy's first memoir, Paper Shadows, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award, the Charles Taylor Prize, and the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize. He won the Edna Staebler Award for Non-fiction. Choy's most recent book is Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying.