Attend a Library Author Series discussion with Kim Liao, a lecturer in the Department of English, about her book, Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence.
Register
In 2010, Liao traveled to Taiwan to learn the truth about her family. After WWII, her grandfather Thomas Liao became the leader of the Taiwanese independence movement, his land was seized, his relatives were arrested and his nephew was sentenced to death. With their lives at stake, Thomas’s wife Anna brought their four children to America to start a new life—never speaking a word about Thomas again.
When Liao arrived in Taiwan six decades later, she was shocked to learn that the KMT government had erased much of the story of Taiwanese independence from the official historical record. For years, Taiwanese citizens were kept in the dark about the violence that transpired during four decades of martial law, with the silenced voices of the White Terror Period mirroring the silencing of the Liao family’s story.
Despite this suppression, she learned that former independence leaders had preserved this history in their memories and personal archives. With their help, Liao discovered two stories: her family's story of love and loss and Taiwan’s fight for freedom.
Liao’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, The Millions, Salon, Fourth River, Hippocampus and others. A former Taiwan Fulbright Creative Research Scholar, her work has received support from the Vermont Studio Center, the Jentel Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the Anderson Center and the Ragdale Foundation.
