Crossing the Phantom Pass
A Cancer Journey

Julia Kwong (Author)

9781487565916

Hardback, published 14 October 2025

264 pages
22.2 x 14.6 x 2 cm, 0.44 kg

“In Crossing the Phantom Pass, Julia Kwong offers a deeply personal and courageous account of her battle with cancer, sharing not only practical strategies for navigating illness but also profound reflections on the human side of healthcare and on a system often stretched to its limits. This compelling memoir is essential reading not only for those facing cancer, but for anyone confronting life’s challenges with resilience, insight, and hope.” - Min Zhou , Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

“With bravery and deep insight, Julia Kwong recounts her courageous journey with breast cancer – a journey that takes her into the dark wilderness of a medical system filled with hostile gatekeepers, fragmentation of care, and indifferent, arrogant, and rarely caring doctors. Her survival hinges on an inner strength and resiliency that she absorbs from her ailing father, also a cancer patient. This book is both a deeply moving personal narrative and a sharp critique of modern medical practice.” - Charles Hayter, MA, MD, FRCPC, author of Cancer Confidential: Backstage Dramas in the Radiation Clinic

“This first-hand account of the strengths and weaknesses of our modern, Western medical system is impactful. The human consequences of the system’s failings will have the reader wanting to reach out to the author and assist in the face of inevitable confusion and fear. All healthcare practitioners and those wanting to understand our health care system could benefit from reading this book.” - Neena Chappell, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS, FGSA, CM, LLD(hon), Former Canada Research Chair in Social Gerontology and Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of Victoria

“This book is a must-read for any middle-aged or older woman for whom a diagnosis of breast cancer has been made or is a possibility. It poignantly presents the realities of not knowing what questions to ask and specialists’ lack of understanding for what patients do and do not know. Julia Kwong underscores the limitations of the concepts of person-directed and person-centered care. In addition to patients, physicians and gatekeepers need to read this book.” - Gloria M. Gutman, Professor Emerita of Gerontology, Simon Fraser University, and Past President, International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics

In this poignant and riveting personal narrative, Julia Kwong, distinguished professor emerita of sociology, explores her own experience of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis while her father is in the last stage of metastasized prostate cancer. In Crossing the Phantom Pass, she reflects on the medical process and her own emotional roller coaster in encountering this daunting illness in a dual sense.
With academic rigour and accessible prose, Kwong documents the ordinary fears, worries, and urgencies of cancer treatment. She takes readers through the emotional turmoil of her experiences as she undergoes complex surgery and radiation treatment. Kwong manages to complete her treatment just in time to return to Hong Kong and see her father one last time.
Crossing the Phantom Pass explores the uniqueness, as well as the commonalities, embedded in each cancer patient’s experience. Centring knowledge as power and resilience, Kwong integrates practical information and unfiltered realities into the emotional narrative of the book.
Questions of hope, death, and grief intertwine with critiques and commentary on the healthcare system, offering an honest portrayal of one woman’s journey – and a source of solace for others facing similar trials.

Foreword
Arthur Kleinman