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Framed by Wayson Choy's two brushes with death, Not Yet is an intimate and insightful study of one man's reasons for living.
In 2001, Wayson Choy suffered a combined asthma-heart attack. As he lay in his hospital bed, slipping in and out of consciousness, his days punctuated by the beeps of the machines that were keeping him alive, Choy heard the voices of his ancestors warning him that without a wife, he would one day die alone. And yet through his ordeal Choy was never alone; men and women, young and old, from all cultures and ethnicities, stayed by Choy's side until he was well. When his heart failed him a second time, four years later, it was the strength of his bonds with these people, forged through countless acts of kindness, that pulled Choy back to his life.
Not Yet is a passionate, sensitive, and beautiful exploration of the importance of family, which in Choy's case is constituted not through blood but through love. It is also a quiet manifesto for embracing life, not blind to our mortality, but knowing how lucky we are for each day that comes. "A story of heroic transcendence of uncertainty."
- The Globe and Mail
"A harrowing, enthralling and incandescent memoir ... a work that blends tension and sadness with joy and contemplation. And it is a reminder, as if we needed one, of why Wayson Choy is beloved, as a writer and as a man."
- Edmonton Journal Wayson 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 in 2000. Prologue
Just as I was trudging down the stairs to leave for the Toronto airport, headed for Massachusetts, a sudden acidic tingling — a burning sensation — crept up from the back of my throat and triggered a hacking fit. My mouth contorted. My nostrils widened. My head whiplashed with the force of a hurricane; my mouth exploded in a sneeze. I snorted wetly like a cartoon pig. Gasping for air, I dug into my pocket for a tissue, and had anyone been there, I would have excused myself with, "Sorry. Allergies."
My mind was too busy brooding over the deadline for my novel — the final deadline that would conclude three years of work. I had a month left to go.
As for the coughing, in the last two months or so I had fallen into fits of dry coughing, but if I held my breath, tightened my lungs, and didn't move a muscle for at least five seconds, I could breathe with ease again.
During July of 2001, with my book deadline looming, far from my mind was any thought that these spells could be signs of ill health, or worse. Only in Victorian dramas and novels, and in grand operas, does a cough or two foreshadow finis. Certainly, a sneeze lacks any hint of funereal dignity.
When I was young, I believed that I might die instantly, in a car crash or a great train wreck. In my late forties, I thought I might have a heart attack because I devoured too much fried meat and scorned leafy greens. By my fifties, I was waiting patiently for some dramatic sign of illness: cancer, for example, or a stroke, or aids, which had, by my sixth decade, taken away a dozen beloved friends.
But I remained lucky.
Now, in my sixties, and believing that I looked at least ten years younger, I had my mantra: whenever I coughed suddenly, coarsely, I told anyone nearby, "Sorry. Allergies."
People nodded sympathetically. A few even said that they too swallowed little pills to numb their nasal passages. But by July my pills weren't working, and my extended family members, Karl and Marie, Jean a
In 2001, Wayson Choy suffered a combined asthma-heart attack. As he lay in his hospital bed, slipping in and out of consciousness, his days punctuated by the beeps of the machines that were keeping him alive, Choy heard the voices of his ancestors warning him that without a wife, he would one day die alone. And yet through his ordeal Choy was never alone; men and women, young and old, from all cultures and ethnicities, stayed by Choy's side until he was well. When his heart failed him a second time, four years later, it was the strength of his bonds with these people, forged through countless acts of kindness, that pulled Choy back to his life.
Not Yet is a passionate, sensitive, and beautiful exploration of the importance of family, which in Choy's case is constituted not through blood but through love. It is also a quiet manifesto for embracing life, not blind to our mortality, but knowing how lucky we are for each day that comes. "A story of heroic transcendence of uncertainty."
- The Globe and Mail
"A harrowing, enthralling and incandescent memoir ... a work that blends tension and sadness with joy and contemplation. And it is a reminder, as if we needed one, of why Wayson Choy is beloved, as a writer and as a man."
- Edmonton Journal Wayson 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 in 2000. Prologue
Just as I was trudging down the stairs to leave for the Toronto airport, headed for Massachusetts, a sudden acidic tingling — a burning sensation — crept up from the back of my throat and triggered a hacking fit. My mouth contorted. My nostrils widened. My head whiplashed with the force of a hurricane; my mouth exploded in a sneeze. I snorted wetly like a cartoon pig. Gasping for air, I dug into my pocket for a tissue, and had anyone been there, I would have excused myself with, "Sorry. Allergies."
My mind was too busy brooding over the deadline for my novel — the final deadline that would conclude three years of work. I had a month left to go.
As for the coughing, in the last two months or so I had fallen into fits of dry coughing, but if I held my breath, tightened my lungs, and didn't move a muscle for at least five seconds, I could breathe with ease again.
During July of 2001, with my book deadline looming, far from my mind was any thought that these spells could be signs of ill health, or worse. Only in Victorian dramas and novels, and in grand operas, does a cough or two foreshadow finis. Certainly, a sneeze lacks any hint of funereal dignity.
When I was young, I believed that I might die instantly, in a car crash or a great train wreck. In my late forties, I thought I might have a heart attack because I devoured too much fried meat and scorned leafy greens. By my fifties, I was waiting patiently for some dramatic sign of illness: cancer, for example, or a stroke, or aids, which had, by my sixth decade, taken away a dozen beloved friends.
But I remained lucky.
Now, in my sixties, and believing that I looked at least ten years younger, I had my mantra: whenever I coughed suddenly, coarsely, I told anyone nearby, "Sorry. Allergies."
People nodded sympathetically. A few even said that they too swallowed little pills to numb their nasal passages. But by July my pills weren't working, and my extended family members, Karl and Marie, Jean a