Red Pockets - by Alice Mah (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRITING

A poignant personal narrative about family, cultural history, and ecology, and a quest to understand what we owe our ancestors and our descendants from an unforgettable new voice.

Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people return to their home villages in China to sweep the tombs of their ancestors. They make offerings of food and incense to prevent their ancestors from becoming hungry ghosts that could cause misfortune, illnesses and crop failures. Yet for the past century, the tombs of many have been left unattended because of the ruptures of war and revolution. Ninety years after her grandfather's last visit and fifty years after her last relative died in the village, Alice Mah returns to her ancestral home in South
China. While she finds clan members who still remember her family, there are no tombs left to sweep. Instead, there are incalculable clan debts to be paid.

In this haunting blend of memoir, cultural history and environmental exploration, Mah chronicles her search for an offering to the hungry ghosts of our neglected ancestors, which takes her from the rice villages of South China to post-industrial England, to the Chinatowns of British Columbia where she grew up and the isles and industry of Scotland where she now lives. As years pass and fires rage on, she becomes increasingly troubled by her ancestors' neglected graves, which culminates in a crisis of spiritual belief: What do we owe to past and future generations? What do we owe to the places that we inhabit?

Review Quotes

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRITING

"A mixture of memoir and polemic, Red Pockets cleverly connects the familial with the global. . . . Sensitive and sensible." --The Scotsman

"One of the most unusual and powerful books I've read in a long time. . . . A moving and imaginative memoir." --Rosemary Goring, The Herald

"Mah's rich, reflective book is focused on a different type of connection between the past and the present . . . I had not read a book making these links before, and it is a compelling and moving narrative." --Maya Goodfellow, The Guardian

"Fear of the future, an ache for the past, the present awash with disquiet: into this turmoil, Alice Mah's book appears like a little red boat, keeping hope afloat against all odds." --Anita Roy, The Guardian

"Mah's writing is intelligent and highly observational . . . she's a strong, lucid storyteller." ―Geographical

"Red Pockets is a marvel: a work that wrestles with diasporic dreams, ecological destruction, filial devotion and the fragile, ferocious thread of our connection and responsibility to one another, even across the great divides of time and geography. Consumed not just by an apocalyptic vision, but by the collapse of the idea of hope, Alice Mah sets out on a journey to understand what we owe the generations that precede us. But as she journeys across a suffering planet, her focus shifts; how can we be good ancestors as well as good descendants?" --Kyo Maclear, award-winning author of Unearthing and Birds Art Life

"A beautifully written, deeply fascinating and richly thought-provoking book which looks, bravely, at what it means to live at this most ecologically destructive time; about what we inherit and what we leave behind. Moving, important and finely crafted." --Lucy Jones, author of Losing Eden

"Red Pockets is a fascinating exploration of the linkages between ancestral inheritance, diasporic belonging and our climate future. Mah takes us on a keenly observed, immersive journey, from an astute sociological portrait of a Chinese clan village to toxic petrochemical towns to the green hills of Glasgow, and offers surprising, beautifully interconnected insights on material and psychic debt, climate despair, trauma and hope. I read it in one sitting, which took me on a moving and often unexpected journey." --Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West

"Mah asks beautiful questions on grief, climate and identity that are as urgent as they are pensive. The result is a spiritual Bildungsroman that envelops the reader in a meditation on past, present and future." --Jenny Lau, author of An A-Z of Chinese Food (Recipes Not Included)

About the Author

ALICE MAH is a Chinese Canadian-British writer and Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at the University of Glasgow. Originally from Smithers, British Columbia, she has a long-standing interest in ecology and place. Her award-winning research focuses on toxic pollution and environmental justice.