Where Every Ghost Has a Name

A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence

Kim Liao

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Hardback

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English

Rowman & Littlefield
01 September 2024

Asian history; National liberation & independence, post-colonialism

In 2010, Kim Liao traveled to Taiwan to reconstruct the lost story of her grandparents. But upon arrival, she found that four decades of Taiwanese history had been silenced by Chiang Kai-Shek’s KMT Government during the White Terror period. As leader of the first Taiwanese Independence Movement after WWII, in 1947, her grandfather Thomas Liao became a fugitive: his family’s land was seized, his relatives were arrested, and his nephew was sentenced to death.

With their lives under threat, Thomas’s wife Anna decided to abandon their marriage and take her children to America to start a new life. She never spoke of Thomas again. For the rest of her life, Grandma Anna presided over a hushed silence about the past. No one spoke about Taiwan, and her youngest son Richard told anyone who asked that his father was dead, and never told his daughter Kim about her family’s story, since he himself didn’t know any of the details.

Six decades later, Kim arrived in Taiwan to search for the truth, and was shocked to learn that the KMT government had erased the story of independence from the official historical record—even in a now democratic society. Young Taiwanese citizens who grew up in the latter half of the twentieth century were kept in the dark about their nation’s own violent history. The silenced voices of Taiwanese history mirrored the silencing of my family’s story, making her that much more determined to share it with the world.

Despite this suppression, the history of the Taiwanese Independence Movement was kept alive in the memories and personal archives of former independence leaders. Once Kim gained entry into this network, she discovered how the Liao family played a pivotal role in achieving democratic

By: Kim Liao
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 157mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 572g
ISBN: 9781538194058
ISBN 10: 1538194058
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 01 September 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Kim Liao is an author of creative nonfiction, fiction, journalism, and criticism. She was a 2010-2011 Fulbright Creative Writing Research Scholar in Taiwan, and received writing grants from Harvard and Stanford universities. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Rumpus, Lit Hub, and others. This is her first full-length book.

Reviews for Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence

From its astonishing opening lines, Where Every Ghost Has a Name grabbed me by the collar and never let me go. Both a poignant memoir and a riveting mystery, this is a deeply moving, meticulously researched debut In Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence, author Kim Liao takes us on her journey across the Pacific Ocean, from Long Island to Taiwan, in search of her exiled grandfather's past. It recounts that history is never simple. Political dissidents are not the only ones caught up in turbulent times, but also the men, women, and children around them forced to be left behind. And silence is often the loudest voice that tells family stories. It narrates hardship and sacrifice but also the triumphs and strength of human agency to maintain a sense of purpose and identity even in the most impossible situation. In this astonishing story, Kim Liao skillfully unravels a family mystery through a blend of meticulous historical inquiry and vividly imagined reconstructions of the past. This work is not just an important contribution to Taiwanese history, but also a profound account of the wide-reaching personal sacrifices that resistance against authoritarianism entails.