-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
a memoir of grief, friendship, and spiritual care
by Chenxing Han
For readers of The Wild Edge of Sorrow and Crying in H-Mart―a profound and searching memoir of life, loss, grief, and renewal from one of American Buddhism's most vital new voices.
How do we grieve our losses? How can we care for our spirits? one long listening offers enduring companionship to all who ask these searing, timeless questions.
Immigrant daughter, novice chaplain, bereaved friend: author Chenxing Han (Be the Refuge) takes us on a pilgrimage through the wilds of grief and laughter, pain and impermanence, reconnecting us to both the heartache and inexplicable brightness of being human.
Eddying around three autumns of Han's life, one long listening journeys from a mountaintop monastery in Taiwan to West Coast oncology wards, from oceanside Ireland to riverfront Phnom Penh. Through letters to a dying friend, bedside chaplaincy visits, and memories of a migratory childhood, Han's startling, searching memoir cuts a singular portrait of a spiritual caregiver in training.
Just as we touch the depths, bracing for resolution, Han's swift, multilingual prose sweeps us back to unknowingness: 不知最親切. Not knowing is most intimate. Chinese mothers, hillside graves. A dreamed olive tree, a lost Siberian crane. The music of scripts and silence. These shards--bright, broken, giddy, aching--are mirrors to our own lives in joy and sorrow.
A testament to enduring connection by a fresh and urgent new literary voice, one long listening asks fearlessly into the stories we inhabit, the hopes we relinquish, and what it means simply to be, to and for the ones we love.
"one long listening is a lyric wonder, a joyful wandering, an ode to unknowing, a love letter to a friend, a still pool of grief, a fuzzy sock, a dancing crane. That a memoir can be all of these things and more is a testament to its author's boundless curiosity. Chenxing Han beautifully channels Simone Weil's definition of prayer as 'absolutely unmixed attention.' She embraces misspellings, mishearings, and misunderstandings as pathways toward connection, while offering a fresh counterpoint to misrepresentations of hospital chaplaincy and American Buddhism. We need more books like this: a tender and patient act of care." —Simon Han, author of Nights When Nothing Happened
"Written with the delicate ellipsis of Chinese poetry and a novelist's eye for telling detail, Chenxing Han's one long listening is an engaging collage of unforgettable vignettes that meander through her years of hospital chaplaincy, Buddhist studies, world travel, and the heartbreaking loss of her young best friend. Born in Shanghai, raised in America, Han offers honest and poignant stories about cultural displacement—a great challenge of our time—that will charm and unsettle you." —Norman Fischer, Zen priest, poet, and author of When You Greet Me I Bow
This information about one long listening was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Chenxing Han is the author of the widely reviewed Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (North Atlantic Books, 2021). She is a regular contributor to Lion's Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and other publications, and a frequent speaker and workshop leader at schools, universities, and Buddhist communities across the nation. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Hemera Foundation, the Lenz Foundation, and the Institute of Buddhist Studies.
Chenxing holds a BA from Stanford University and an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Graduate Theological Union. Her chaplaincy training began in Cambodia and continued in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she completed a yearlong residency on an oncology ward. She is a coteacher of Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard at Phillips Academy Andover and a co-organizer of May We Gather: A National Buddhist Memorial for Asian American Ancestors.
If you liked one long listening, try these:
by Ocean Vuong
Published 2026
Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
by Hua Hsu
Published 2023
From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.
by Carol Smith
Published 2022
A powerful exploration of grief following the death of the author's son that combines memoir, reportage, and lessons in how to heal.
Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
