After hearing Kim Liao speak at the 2024 North American Taiwan Studies Association Conference welcoming plenary session, I found myself eagerly anticipating the September release of her book, Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence. In 2010, Kim traveled to Taiwan on a Fulbright, seeking to uncover the story of her grandfather, Thomas Liao (Liao Wen-yi), a prominent leader of the Taiwanese independence movement. Her research led to conversations with family near and far as well as former independence leaders who had preserved bits and pieces of her grandfather’s—and Taiwan’s—history in their memories and personal archives.
Where Every Ghost Has a Name not only illuminates an important chapter of Taiwanese history but also offers a deeply intimate and relatable portrayal of Kim as a Taiwanese American. Throughout the book, she navigates language barriers, encounters both resistance and support in her quest to explore her family’s past, and comes to understand Taiwan’s long road to democracy. This captivating work of creative nonfiction is a valuable read for Taiwanese Americans and for anyone who has wrestled with family secrets, their identity, or their place within their family lineage.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Cosette: Where Every Ghost Has a Name begins with your arrival in Taiwan back in 2010, almost fifteen years ago. Clearly, the book’s publication is the culmination of a long journey. Could you tell me more about what sparked this project?
Kim: When I was in high school, I learned of my Grandpa Thomas’s independence movement in [George Kerr’s] Formosa Betrayed. Reading it with absolutely no context was shocking. How was my grandfather the leader of this movement, regardless of whether it was successful or formally recognized? How did I not know about this? What’s the deal here? I had so many questions when I first found out.
As a high school student, I didn’t know where to go from there. And when I got to college, I studied Western literature, American literature, British literature, French literature… It wasn’t until I had started at Emerson as a master’s student in publishing that I took a nonfiction writing class and realized, “Wow, narrative nonfiction is the creative writing I want to do.” I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t really have a story until I returned to the mystery of my grandfather Thomas.
Many young writers start by looking inward or at their family. I started thinking about where I come from and being biracial. My mom’s side is Jewish and Ukrainian, and I knew their immigration story, but I knew nothing about my dad’s side. My Taiwanese side was this big question mark. So I went back to the book. Rereading it, I thought “Wow. This happened. He really ran this movement, and I didn’t dream this!” I started to do a bit of digging, asking my father and his siblings about what they remembered.
At first, I thought this would just be an essay. Then, in my creative nonfiction class, everyone was so interested and had so many questions. I started wondering whether this could be more than an essay. My professor told me, “You should write more about this. Maybe it’s a book.”
I started trying to find out as much as I could about Taiwanese history and my family. There wasn’t much published in English about the White Terror period back in 2008. Thinking about that absence, I realized there was a fascinating story here with very little available in America. This began to plant the seeds of the idea that I would need to go to Taiwan to find out what happened.
C: You’ve shared that you began this journey unfamiliar with Taiwan’s history and unable to read Chinese. Other than Formosa Betrayed, did you find any English-language resources particularly helpful?
K: Taiwan: A New History by Rubinstein gave me a textbook-style overview of the history of Taiwan that was very helpful at the start.
The Foreign Relations of the United States archives also has a whole set of telegrams, cables, and letters about Thomas Liao, the movement, and the U.S. government’s perspective on it all. It was really interesting to read this trail of foreign policy in English and think about when my grandfather had a shot and when he realized he no longer had a shot. There was a dramatic arc there.
C: You grew up knowing almost nothing about your grandfather before spending over a decade researching him. Could you tell me more about that process of discovering who he was? How do you envision your relationship with him now, and what does he mean to you?
K: There was a moment when I began to realize what my grandfather meant to the generation of Taiwanese people who fled Taiwan during martial law. Maybe a year or two into the project, my friend and I went to a screening of a film about the White Terror period in Cambridge. Afterwards, I talked with some people and told them about how I was researching my grandfather. When I told them my grandfather was Liao Wen-yi, their jaws dropped. They were like, “But he was our president!” (of an unrecognized opposition republic, but president nonetheless!) They started treating me very differently.
All of a sudden, it felt like there was a population that knew what I was trying to find out. I realized that his story was really significant to a lot of people and that there could be a historical importance here beyond my personal interest.
Thomas Liao was a tough guy to research, because this was a long time ago and he wrote in Japanese. He’s still a little bit of an enigma, a little bit of a ghost, even after these 15 years. He’s like this specter that haunts the family. But, there’s also something really inspirational about what Grandpa Thomas did. I’m really proud of him, even though his actions caused a lot of strife.
C: In the book, you write that “for the Liaos, family was a structure held together with glue, the bonds of blood and the seal of silence.” As you made the decision to break this silence, did you ever have concerns about your right to do so, especially as someone who grew up outside of Taiwan and is several generations away from your grandfather?
K: That’s part of why this project took 15 years. There was a lot of imposter syndrome and fear. Would my family get mad at me? Would I make factual errors? Do I have the right to tell this story? Am I “Taiwanese enough” to tell it?
Over the years, I’ve had so many people validate the need for these stories to be told. People need to know that Taiwan is a place that exists outside of China and that it has its own history and relationship with the Republic of China (ROC), external to whatever the People’s Republic of China (PRC) wants to say about it.
There was definitely a lot to get over, but what helps me is not taking this project on as a history of all of Taiwan. This is the history of my family, and I can own my family history. I couldn’t speak for anyone else, but I could speak for our family.
C: In the book, you mention that your dad directly told you that “you shouldn’t write about this.” Other than your dad, did you have other family members who did not want you to write this book or did not want to talk about the past? How did you deal with that?
K: To start, I think it’s important to know that leaving her husband and bringing their kids to America was extremely difficult for my Grandma Anna, and she was the keeper of the silence. This project would have been impossible while she was still alive. So, because she never spoke about the past, there was a kind of unspoken “taboo” on asking questions in our family that filtered down to the next generation in interesting ways.
My dad and his siblings all interpret what happened and their father very differently. They have different vantage points, which makes sense. The funny thing was that, when I went to Taiwan, my dad was the one asking “What food did you eat?” and “What did you find?” He didn’t want to read about himself or confront any of the painful memories, but he was excited for me to see Taiwan and learn Chinese. It was interesting. I think his point of view shifted a little over time.
My Uncle Alex, my dad’s next older brother, wanted nothing to do with his father Thomas. He wasn’t angry about it, per se, and now he’s excited to read the book. My dad was more angry about it. But at some point when I was interviewing people, Uncle Alex said, “I don’t really remember anything.” He was happy to talk about my grandmother, and he and my Aunt Kelly talked about when they all went back to reunite with my grandfather in Taiwan for his 70th birthday. They told some funny stories and remembered the food, but it felt like he just didn’t connect to Thomas’s life at all as connected to him. That’s how he coped.
My oldest uncle, Uncle Ted, who is 10 years older than my dad, loved the fact that his father was part of the movement. He’s really proud of Grandpa Thomas. When he saw an early draft of the book, his reaction was “I want this published everywhere.”
I think my Aunt Jeanne, who is the oldest of the siblings, felt a lot of sadness because she and Grandpa Thomas had a really close relationship that was ruined. But she didn’t necessarily feel super strongly about the book either way. She knew I was interviewing her for the book, and she was happy to help and have the memories. But for her, it was emotional to remember these things. Again, everyone’s reaction to it was different. It can be a lot, because as a writer, I was afraid of hurting my family members, but now I know that anyone who doesn’t want to confront these things can just stop reading. I think that ultimately, this process has been cathartic and healing for at least some family members.
C: Have you met other Taiwanese Americans rediscovering their family’s stories or seeking to understand their heritage? What advice do you have for people who are interested in doing so?
K: I’ve definitely met people over the course of this journey. Someone who I’m really excited about is Grace Loh Prasad, who wrote The Translator’s Daughter. I recently met her, and have been loving her book as I’ve had time to read it. Her memoir is also about lineage, language barriers, family stories, and cultural identity. It’s really interesting to speak with other Taiwanese Americans and think about how hybrid we are, how we all find our identities, how Taiwanese we feel, and how much of that is a function of either knowing the language or being able to visit Taiwan.
In terms of advice, I would say that time passes really quickly. Family elders will not be around forever. We like to have fun, silly, lighthearted conversations with our families, and people often don’t want to bring up the past or ask questions for fear of being awkward or upsetting folks. But if you want to know something, ask your family member those questions now, instead of just thinking, “Oh, I’d love to interview them someday.”
My aunt’s recollections became a huge part of the coming to America story for my family. Going down to Florida, staying with her for a week, and interviewing her brought back all these memories for her and forged this new relationship for us. It made us closer, and that was lovely.
C: Has the process of learning about your grandfather and Taiwan changed your perspective on what it means to be Taiwanese American and what you find important?
K: In terms of being Taiwanese American, this process certainly helped me embrace my cultural identity and connect with the Taiwanese community. I still have imposter syndrome, sometimes, and wonder if I’m Taiwanese enough to be the spokesperson for this story. But the more people I meet and the older I get, I wonder if there’s some aspect of Taiwanese or Taiwanese American identity that has to navigate hybridity, definitions, and legacies. To be Taiwanese is to be saddled with the complexities of our wonderful beautiful island… and perhaps to be forced to educate others about it!
In terms of other ways this process has changed me, I always thought of this project as the project that made me a writer. I had to detach from instant gratification. My professor worked on his memoir for 10 or 20 years. At first, I thought I’d be done faster, and he was like, “You don’t know that.” I learned patience.
Sometimes, the time was not right. There were moments when it was too emotional to write about this stuff. Those are the moments where you have to deal with what happened, deal with family, and deal with the emotions, then come back to it when you’re feeling a little more detached. That’s still a good lesson for me as a writer. Sometimes you write really meaningfully through deep emotions, but sometimes it’s too painful and you have to negotiate your relationships first.
It’s very satisfying to finally finish something that will be published after all this time. There’s a sense of satisfaction there.
C: Who do you hope will read your book?
K: I’ve thought a lot about my audience, especially as I was revising the book. I want my audience to be all Americans or English speakers, so I dialed a lot of the history down. The sources are still there if you want to do more reading, but I wanted the book to read like a nonfiction novel rather than a textbook.
I think my audience could also be anyone who has ever had family secrets, struggled with identity issues, or tried to figure out how they fit into their family lineage. I hope that the book is interesting enough that if someone came to it without a vested interest in Taiwan, they’d still get something out of it.
Kim 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. She lives with her family near New York City and teaches writing to students of all ages.
Cosette Wu, the great-granddaughter of Dr. Shih Jiangnan, the second Taiwanese to earn a doctorate in medicine and an activist killed in the 228 Massacre. Wu began writing The Story of Shih Jiangnan 施江南傳 as a high school sophomore and published the biography in her senior year. An excerpt from this piece was named a finalist in the inaugural Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes, established by novelist Charles Yu. She is currently a co-director of the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP.
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