The Unwinding of the Miracle

A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After

By: Julie Yip-Williams

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller, Joshua Williams

Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best seller

Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today

As a young mother facing a terminal diagnosis, Julie Yip-Williams began to write her story, a story like no other. What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more - a powerful exhortation to the living.

"An exquisitely moving portrait of the daily stuff of life." (The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice)

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by:

• The New York Times Book Review
• Time
• Real Simple
• Good Housekeeping

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 300 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 37, 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 audiobook is as sprawling and majestic as the life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and shattering. It is an audiobook 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.

Praise for The Unwinding of the Miracle

"Everything worth understanding and holding on to is in this book.... A miracle indeed." (Kelly Corrigan, New York Times best-selling author)

"A beautifully written, moving, and compassionate chronicle that deserves to be read and absorbed widely." (Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies)

©2019 Julie Yip-Williams (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Eloquent, gutting and at times disarmingly funny... Yip-Williams writes with such vibrancy and electricity even as she is dying.... This memoir is so many things - a triumphant tale of a blind immigrant, a remarkable philosophical treatise and a call to arms to pay attention to the limited time we have on this earth. But at its core, it’s an exquisitely moving portrait of the daily stuff of life: family secrets and family ties, marriage and its limitlessness and limitations, wild and unbounded parental love and, ultimately, the graceful recognition of what we can’t - and can - control.” (The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice)

“Everything worth understanding and holding on to is in this book.... A miracle indeed.” (Kelly Corrigan, New York Times best-selling author of The Middle Place and Tell Me More)

“A beautifully written, moving, and compassionate chronicle that deserves to be read and absorbed widely.” (Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies)

“Julie Yip-Williams lived a life defined by effort and incredible self-reliance. But in this searing memoir of increasing vulnerability, she dismantles and then reconstructs what it means to be triumphant. Her writing examines not only her disability and illness - and their cultural, medical, and narrative constructs - but love, authenticity, hope, egotism, even rage. I didn’t know Julie, but in these pages, I grew to love her.” (Lucy Kalanithi)

A true gift!

Julie Yip-Williams memoir is a true gift to those lucky enough to have good health and to those dealing with life limiting illnesses. I am grateful for what she has shared here and am even more determined to shake things up and pay attention to the things that are most important in my life.
Her honest account of her and her family’s journey through her illness is a testament to her strength and dedication to her husband and child. Thank you to Julie and her family for sharing the intimate details of this inspiring story.

Honest and heartfelt but a little repetitive

The author’s narrative was very moving at times, and hearing how she and her Vietnamese family persevered against overwhelming obstacles was inspiring and the best part of the book to me. Her husband sounded like a pretty awesome person too. The journey thru cancer was grim and tedious. At the risk of sounding insensitive, some passages were repetitive to the point that I felt like my audible narration had gone back to an earlier chapter. I wish the story had been more tightly edited to remove some of the repetition. Otherwise it was honest, heartfelt, realistic, and moving, including her husband’s epilogue. The narrator was excellent.

Beautiful

It’s just a beautiful, raw and brutally honest look at a terminal diagnosis. Some reviews criticize the anger and redundancy of the book. Personally, I think that’s just part of the honesty of her journey. It’s an inspiring, honest and heartbreaking book.

A must read...

To appreciate life, we must accept and respect death. Julie taught me that. Julie died of the same cancer that took my mother 2 years prior to her death. Thank you, Julie

Honest, revealing truth about the process and feelings.

This is a hard thing to listen to but, useful to hear after losing a young nephew and my mom to cancer. It gave me insight into the process of dying and the thoughts of those dying.

I think one of the things that bothered me most when my nephew was dying was the false hope that people gave. They had good intentions but, it made my nephew feel that he did not have enough faith. I like how the author faces her illness with as much honesty and reality as possible.

Profound and Honest

I found this book easy to listen to but hard to hear. Raw emotions and unfiltered truths throughout. While this is clearly a story with a sad ending it isn’t sad. I finished it in two days and I highly recommend.

Sad story

This book is very well, excellently narrated, however 2 stars for the story. This is a sad story, a lot of detail of what happens in the life of a terminal cancer patient. did not leave me any hope for happiness even tough at times for whatever reason was my original expectation/hope. Moreover it scared the shit out my me that something like this happens to someone really close to me.

On the other hand, a confirmation that there is no such thing as justice in life. Julie was destined to die since she was a baby but escaped death from Vietnam and flourished in America all the way to an Ivy League college. Then she got the cancer, again sad story and very detailed chronicles of her dead.

God bless Her memory as well as Josh and the girls all the love to them.

Dying from a new perspective

I have nothing but respect & gratitude for the author for choosing to share this most personal of journeys with us. This has given me a whole new perspective on the journey to the life beyond this one. It was very well written and narrated, and I would highly recommend it.

Death is mandatory. Living is optional

Julie couldn't be more different than I on the exterior. We are however very similar on life philosophy on many aspects of the miracle that is life. Because of that, this book touched me profoundly. I look forward to my adventures in Antarctica. I look forward to spending daily walks with my dogs. In other words, I am more cognizant that death is mandatory, life is optional.

Read this book. Be present every day. Travel. Be brave. Seek out adventures. Appreciate the loved ones in your life.

Very private memoir and a reflection on life.

Great memoir ❤️ It bounced around and was a little repetitive, but still wonderful. I can't imagine how hard this was for her to write and for her family to read. God Bless her daughters❣️