The Weight of Ghosts

The Weight of Ghosts is a lyrical memoir by an author struggling with the death of her older son and sifting through the details of her life.

The Weight of Ghosts is a circling of grief following the death of the author’s older son when he was twenty-one, 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. The Weight of Ghosts 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. The Weight of Ghosts 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.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“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

“This is a beautiful memoir about the author’s grief after the death of her son. This main story is wrapped in a telling of the author’s understanding of her own complicated Arab American identity, which in itself offers something novel to our understanding of Arab American lived experience. Born in Lebanon to a Jordanian father and an American mother, Halaby has never quite known how to identify herself, delving deep into ancestry percentages and her mother’s secrets to try and figure out her own story. In my opinion though, it is the writing style that is the most exceptional part of the book. Part poetry, part diary, part tapestry, the story weaves a nonlinear path back and forth to touch the night that the author’s son died. Each time she tells the story of that night we learn a little more.

Halaby’s memoir is a deeply rich and sad account of a mother’s loss and longing for connection. I was struck by the devastation and loneliness of feeling untethered through her narratives of a disjointed past. There is much to feel and connect with in her history. Halaby’s complicated past and parentage, as well as the complexities of finding belonging and identity through her relationships and goals, is captivating.”
—Arab American National Museum