
The Weight of Ghosts
Laila Halaby(Author)
Red Hen Press
Published on 19. October 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-1-63628-134-6 (ISBN)
Description
The Weight of Ghosts is a circling of grief following the death of the author's older son when he was 21, a horror that was compounded by her younger son's drug use, the country's slow eruption as it dealt with its own brokenness, and reckoning the author had to do regarding her own story. Weight is a lyrical reclaiming and an insistence by the author that she own the rights to her story, which is American flavored with an unreleasing elsewhere. Weight is an immigrant story and a love story. While it is raw and honest and tragic, it is also a hopeful, funny, and original telling that demonstrates the strength of the human spirit, while offering a vocabulary for these most unmanageable human experiences.
Reviews / Votes
"Equal parts devastating and life-affirming, Laila Halaby's memoir offers wisdom and truth for everyone who has ever moved through a difficult time and shredded a skin to adapt. There are many layers to this story, all tied together by the clear, poetic language that is as musical as the birdsong that accompanies Halaby on her healing walks around Tucson. The Weight of Ghosts is a brave and remarkable achievement."-Alice Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point and In the Gloaming"Beautiful and heartbreaking."-Randa Jarrar, author of Love Is An Ex- Country
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Pasadena
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
318 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-63628-134-6 (9781636281346)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Laila Halaby is the author of two novels, Once in a Promised Land (Washington Post top 100 works of fiction for 2007; Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers) and West of the Jordan (PEN Beyond Margins award winner), as well as two collections of poetry, why an author writes to a guy holding a fish and my name on his tongue. Laila has two master's degrees (UCLA and LMU), was a Fulbright recipient, and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona where she works as a counselor, museum educator, and creative writing teacher.