That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in
Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her
grandmother, only to flee with her family the political upheaval of
her country in the late 1970s. Loaded into a rickety boat with three
hundred other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately,
America, where a surgeon at UCLA gave her partial sight. She would go
on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, and
a life she had once assumed would be impossible. Then, at age
thirty-seven, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with
terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began.
The Unwinding of
the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the
prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie
Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and,
finding none, began to write her way through it—a chronicle that
grew beyond her imagining. Motherhood, marriage, the immigrant
experience, ambition, love, wanderlust, tennis, fortune-tellers,
grief, reincarnation, jealousy, comfort, pain, the marvel of the body
in full rebellion—this book is as sprawling and majestic as the
life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and
shattering. It is a book of indelible moments, seared deep—an
incomparable guide to living vividly by facing hard truths
consciously.
With humor, bracing
honesty, and the cleansing power of well-deployed anger, Julie
Yip-Williams set the stage for her lasting legacy and one final
miracle: the story of her life.