One Long Listening

A Memoir of Grief, Friendship, and Spiritual Care

By: Chenxing Han

Narrated by: Chenxing Han

For fans 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Chenxing Han (P)2023 North Atlantic Books

Critic reviews

“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

“Reading one long listening is like walking through a rainbow of light and tears: luminous, transparent, mysterious, and moving, Chenxing Han’s exquisite memoir is an immersive exploration of the grit and grief of life interwoven with the boundless glories of the spirit.”—Catherine Chung, author of The Tenth Muse

Beautiful. Heartfelt. Heart wrenching. Brilliant

The vulnerability of the author created an environment of discretely listening to a conversation between long time much loved friends at a cafe.

A Beautiful Mantra

Ms. Han brings a direct and tender view to the journey or Life, Death, Love and Sorrow. A smart and beautiful deconstructed mantra for us all.

I love the author narrator the book. I’m glad I chose to listen rather than just read it.

Not all of the Asian words or phrases were translated for my understanding, but maybe that was meant to be.