Julie Yip-Williams Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Julie Yip-Williams was a published author before she passed away in March of 2018 due to colon cancer.

The writer was born in Tam-Ky, Vietnam, at the same time that the war was ending. Born on January 6, 1976, she grew up in Monterey Park, California.

Julie attended William College, graduating from there and Harvard Law School. At the time of her death on March 19, 2018, she was 42 years old.

Julie is married and lived in Brooklyn. She had two daughters with her husband, Mia and Isabelle.

The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After is a 2019 novel by Julie Yip-Williams. It was a New York Times Bestseller that was part of the Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as was featured on Today.

Julie Yip-Williams was a young mother who was dealing with a terminal diagnosis. She started writing her story, which ended up being the type of story unlike any other. What started as the chronicle of an early imminent death went on to become something more, and ended up being a powerful exhortation to the living.

The New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice called it an ‘exquisitely moving portrait of the daily stuff of life’. It was also selected as one of the best books of the year by Time, The New York Times Book Review, Real Simple, and Good Housekeeping.

Some days, it seems like Julie Yip-Williams making it through being a baby was some type of miracle. She was born in Vietnam blind, and was barely able to escape getting euthanized as the hands of her grandmother. Then she had to go with her family and flee the political upheaval of her country in the late seventies. She was carefully loaded onto a boat with 300 other refugees where they made their way to Hong Kong and then America.

It was in America that a surgeon at UCLA was able to give her partial sight. She would go on to become a lawyer educated at Harvard and got married, starting a family with her husband. She would also start a life that she once thought would be impossible. At age 37 years old, she had two little girls at home and was diagnosed with having terminal metastatic colon cancer, starting off a journey of a different kind.

The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a life that is shown through the prism of death which is on its way. Julie was diagnosed with illness and in the beginning was looking for a type of clarity and guidance through this experience. When she didn’t find that, she started writing her way through it and the chronicle ended up growing bigger than her deepest imagining.

This books covers so many things, from being a mother to marriage to ambition, tennis, love, wanderlust, the immigrant experience, grief, reincarnation, comfort, jealousy, pain, and the body in full rebellion. It is majestic and sprawling, inspiring and instructive, a book of indelible moments and a fantastic guide to living vividly by consciously taking on hard truths.

With lots of humor, honesty, and the cleansing power of her anger, this author has been able to set up the stage for a legacy that lasts and the miracle that is the story of her life. There has been lots of praise for this book, with Kelly Corrigan calling it a ‘miracle indeed’ and Siddhartha Mukherjee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author calling it a ‘beautifully written, moving, and compassionate chronicle that deserves to be read and absorbed widely’. Check it out to see what you think of it and to absorb the important final words from Julie Yip-Williams for yourself.