FINDING CHIKA
A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tuesdays With Morrie comes Mitch Albom’s most personal story to date: an intimate and heartwarming memoir about what it means to be a family and the young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart.
Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tuesdays With Morrie comes Mitch Albom’s most personal story to date: an intimate and heartwarming memoir about what it means to be a family and the young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart.
Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince.
With no children of their own, the forty-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika’s arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, “No one in Haiti can help you with.”
Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika’s boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost.
Told in hindsight, and through illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most poignant and vulnerable. Finding Chika is a celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they formed—a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family, regardless of how it is made.
- Harper Paperbacks
- Paperback
- May 2021
- 256 Pages
- 9780062952400
Buy the Book
$16.99
About Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom is a bestselling author, screenwriter, playwright and nationally syndicated columnist. The author of five consecutive #1 New York Times bestsellers, his books have collectively sold more than thirty-three million copies in forty-two languages worldwide. Tuesdays With Morrie, which spent four straight years atop the New York Times list, is now the bestselling memoir of all time. Four of Albom’s books, including Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, For One More Day, and Have a Little Faith, have been made into highly acclaimed TV movies for ABC. Oprah Winfrey produced Tuesdays With Morrie, which claimed four Emmy awards including a best actor nod for Jack Lemmon in the lead role. Albom has founded six charities in and around Detroit, including the first-ever twenty-four-hour medical clinic for homeless children in America, and also operates an orphanage in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Albom lives with his wife, Janine, in metropolitan Detroit.
Praise
“The takeaway from this simple, moving memoir is that love has no boundaries and should not be hindered by ethnicity, religion, education, or money.A highly expressive, tender story about how “families are like pieces of art, they can be made from many materials.” -Kirkus Reviews
“This is a story of such heart-wrenching beauty that you think it would take a Mitch Albom to compose it. But Albom is more than the author, for it was his own heart that was broken open by the surprising arrival and excruciating departure of a dazzling little Haitian girl named Chika—who became, in every way that matters, his and his wife’s precious daughter — and it is his own life he seeks to patch back together in the telling.” -Melissa Fay Greene, two-time National Book Award finalist and author of There Is No Me Without You
“Mitch Albom has done it again with this moving memoir of love and loss. You can’t help but fall for Chika. A page-turner that will no doubt become a classic.” -Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club and The Art of Memoir
“Albom’s memoir is a lens into his grief but also a celebration of Chika’s spirit and lessons gleaned from their time together as a family. The heartbreaking but uplifting story is a testament to the bravery and resilience of children and the power of love.” -Library Journal
“Albom conveys the heartbreak of watching her suffer (Chika endured surgeries, and lost teeth and hair), while capturing Chika’s sweet spirit and youthful resilience. He speaks candidly about being too career-focused and putting off having kids until it was too late, and shares how Chika allowed him and his wife to experience the glory of parenthood decades into their marriage. Albom addresses Chika directly: ‘You never have to worry about us forgetting you… we’d lose every memory we ever had before we would let go of yours.’ Both painfully sad and beautiful, this is an absolute tearjerker.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Discussion Questions
1. After her death, Chika first appears to Albom the morning of his father’s funeral. Why do you think the author chose to use these “dialogues” to help tell the story?
2.Why is it particularly difficult for Albom to write about Chika at first?
3. Chika suggests to Albom that one can indeed forget a loved one. What might she mean? What kinds of things might cause the fading of such important memories and feelings?
4. What are healthy ways to maintain powerful connections to lost loved ones? In what ways might such attachment become unhealthy?
5. Consider the various allusions to stories (The House at Pooh Corner, The Chronicles of Narnia, etc.) throughout the book. What is so important about stories for children? What role should narrative play in a healthy adult life?
6. What does Albom mean when he says that “hoarding time” is the most selfish of acts?
7. What is the epiphany Albom has when watching the children sing and dance beneath sprays of water? How does this powerful experience change him?
8. What does Albom mean when he admits that his “sense of control was obliterated” by Chika’s illness? Why was this valuable for him? What’s a healthy balance of control and acceptance in one’s life?
9. What does Albom mean when he says that awful news is “literally a bend in your life”? Why is how you decide to frame and respond to such a challenge so important?
10. How is Albom’s profound experience with Morrie Schwartz relevant to that with Chika?
11. What might it mean that “you can have more than one journey of your life”?
12. How is “a child…both an anchor and a set of wings”?
13. Albom confesses to Chika that he was “a foolish man in many ways.” What does he mean? How does he explain his unwise behavior and decisions? How did Chika help change this?
14. Albom explains that as adults, we “don’t really look,” but merely “look over…glance…[and then] move on.” What does he mean? Why might we so casually neglect such a powerful ability? How does Chika remind him to really look at things?
15. What role does hope play on Albom’s journey with Chika? What does he mean when he says that hopelessness can be contagious?
16. Upon a return to Haiti, Chika runs and twirls and dances with joy in a way that “proves she is home.” What defines home? In what ways can home be something other than a particular place?
17. Consider the Haitian proverb, “Misfortune doesn’t have a horn.” What does it mean? How is it relevant to Chika’s story?
18. What is the complex nature of the Albom’s role as parents to Chika? Beyond biology, what might establish a person as a parent?
19. What is joy? How is it that Albom found joy in such profound loss? What are some ways to stay aware of joy in our daily experience?
20. Do you agree with the Albom’s decision not to discuss Chika’s illness with her?
21. What might explain Chika’s vibrant courage in the face of such challenges?
22. What does Albom mean when he says, “What we carry defines who we are”?
23. What is the nature of grief? How do the Albom’s respond to theirs? What are healthy, effective ways to endure such feelings of loss?
24. Albom likens families to “pieces of art.” What does he mean? What are the essential elements of a powerful, loving family? How did Chika “make a family” for the Alboms?
25. What is Chika’s legacy?