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

by Kim Liao

In 2010, Kim 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 Kim 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, Kim discovered two her family's story of love and loss, and Taiwan’s fight for freedom.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History

336 pages, Hardcover

Published September 3, 2024

Reviews

[Angelina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kim Liao and the Liao family is an inspiration to me. The bravery that Thomas, Anna, Kim and just the entire family, it feels like it just runs through their blood. The way that Kim was able to deliver so many different people’s stories simultaneously without ever making it feel like there was to much information to grasp is a gift truly. She truly did complete her goal of educating about the Taiwanese independence movement. Thank you Kim for bringing us along on your journey.

[Izzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad this book was recommended to me by a fellow Taiwanese-American community organizer and I got to participate in an intergenerational Taiwanese-Am book club. I purposefully had myself put down the book every couple of chapters so I could take a moment to pause and reflect on the information I was learning, and also helped me piece together certain parts of my own family's history and journey.

I have read a lot of Asian-American authors who write "memoirs" or "biographies" or things along those lines; I think my usual critique with what I have read in the past is that the authors end up falling into the "I have to tell the entire history / story of the [insert identity/culture/historic event here] and this interpretation is the only one / the best" but often have little to no research to back it up and often throw in their own personal bias. Kim Liao's book does the complete opposite -- there is such vulnerability and nuance in the way she approaches her own family story, the Taiwanese independence movement, and (in)famous political figures. The trajcetory of where she started to where she ended was never linear, and I think that gives a really genuine representation of what happened pre and post 2/28 in Taiwan but also what research and movement/political work ends up looking like.

Though the series of events that Kim Liao experienced prior to and during her time in Taiwan could be all extremely coincidential, I do believe in the universe and ancestral wisdom guiding her to find what was needed, and also keeping her away from anything that wasn't; which was beautiful to also see acknowledged in the book.

Questions that came up as I was reading and I'm still processing:
- In present day, many organizers and activists talk about "centering love at the heart of the movement" -- has this existed before? Did the generations who came before us have time to think about joy and love? Did the generations get to feel grief and pain? Why are narratives of anger, hurt, sacrifice, martyrdom the ones who are more commonly shared?
- Is there a "perfect" social movement? Who gets left behind and/or forgotten in the fight for "freedom"?
- Do we get to choose our ancestors? Is it purely based on blood or is it culture or is it tied to land? What if our ancestors are heroes to some and villans to others?

I can keep rambling about this book so if any of my mutuals read it, please hit me up to discuss! :')

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story is really compelling but her writing really drew me in (and I don’t say that simply because Kim is a friend). There were parts of the story that could have felt hackneyed and overwrought but they just weren’t. And I think that has a lot to do with the authenticity Liao brings to the piece. I found myself looking up information about Taiwan—its history, its landmarks, and its geography specifically.

What I really enjoyed was the framing of ghosts and the ways in which they guide us, plague us, delight us, and demand that we sometimes do better or more. She carried these ghosts in ways that I found charming, if not with a bit of distance (which, to me, added to this work’s authenticity). I’m so glad this book is out in the world! Check it out!

[Enchanted Prose · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fifteen-year Taiwanese family search unearths larger truths about the island country’s fight for freedom post-WWII (Taipei, Silai, other villages in Taiwan, 2010 to 2011; backstories Mainland China, Japan, New York City, elsewhere, 1947 to 1960s & beyond): “In 1947, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek tried to kill my family. In 2010, I traveled to Taiwan to find out why,” writes Kim Liao, grabbing us at the opening line of Where Every Ghost Has a Name.

An amazing research and identity quest based on scant clues and an overabundance of doggedness and willingness to tackle a formidable, complex, emotionally painful journey. Setting out alone to a foreign country at twenty-six, Liao’s stick-to-itiveness to learn what happened to her paternal Taiwanese grandfather Thomas is an inspiring lesson on exhausting every possibility until you conclude some things are “unrecoverable.”

When do you know when it’s time to stop? A question that applies to Liao’s hunt for her grandfather’s ghosts, her father’s, and her paternal grandmother’s. (Liao’s mother’s roots are Ukrainian Jewish.)

Liao’s suspenseful storytelling is written in the creative nonfiction genre, reading like a puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle. One mystery after another. A spy thriller. A connect-the-dots tale. One coincidence after another. One connection after another. With the added ingredient of the kindness of strangers, being in the right place at the right time, and meeting people no longer afraid to tell truths.

Crafted in novelistic prose that’s periodically interrupted by black-and-white images of photographs, articles, and historical documents Liao discovers over the years. Yet, obscured, entangled, and further complicated by the “whitewashing” of history and unfamiliar languages.

That’s not to say Liao didn’t prepare to learn spoken Taiwanese before she arrived, only to land in the country hit by the one-year class she took in Boston teaching, “The Wrong Kind of Chinese”: “simplified” Mandarin Chinese not the “traditional” Taiwanese languages spoken by the majority of the people – called Taiyu (Taiwanese Hokkien) or Guoyo (Taiwanese Mandarin). A rude awakening that foretells a ‘you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me’ reaction to Liao’s story.

How does this happen? How did anything you’re reading happen?

Consider the silencing of the ghosts Liao pays tribute to. “Survivors need their silence,” she says about victims of acute trauma. The deafening silence of thousands and thousands of ghosts “whispered to me, Find Us. Tell the world. Honor our sacrifice.”

“But how?” she asks. And then proceeds to walk us through her research approach and what it’s like to have barely any evidence and then mine it for all its worth, valiantly.

That silence begins within Liao’s family. It drove her pursuit: her father’s refusal to ever speak about his Taiwanese childhood. Her paternal grandmother’s resolute, resilient, and practical decisions; her childhood unknown too except for a small newspaper clipping of Anna at age twelve living in Chinatown, New York City under the protection of a missionary protecting abused children. Silent uncles, other than her father’s oldest brother who gave her two Chinese books in Mandarin Chinese, she couldn’t read. Her father’s oldest sibling, her Aunt Jeannine, said the most since she grew up during Japan’s occupation of Taiwan and was closest to her father Thomas.

Born and raised on Long Island, New York, Liao teaches creative writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Her year-long trip to Taiwan was funded by a Fulbright Research Scholar award.

Eye-opening, you’ll come away with a better understanding of present-day China-Taiwan tensions. Disturbing reading about how Chiang Kai-Shek ruled Taiwan after WWII ended under an authoritative party – KMT or Kuomintang. America hailed him for having fought against the Communists in Mainland China led by Mae Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China. Meanwhile, Liao writes personally and historically of the nearly forty years the Taiwanese people were subjected to enforced martial law killing 70,000 Taiwanese people, highlighted by two brutal historical events.

The first a protest revolt in 1947 resulting in what’s known as the 228 Incident. It led into the White Terror Period that lasted until 1991. Taiwan’s National 228 Museum memorializes this long battle for freedom.

We read how three Presidential administrations supported Chiang Kai-Shek. Did our leaders know the truth about his “Free China” rule? About his “prison torture” regime on Green Island, “the most remote place.” A key diplomat, George Kerr, appears during this timeframe, with a sampling of his letters. Kerr’s just the tip of the iceberg crystallized by decades of violence, secrets, silence, fear, and a deliberate strategy to keep Americans in the dark publishing as little as possible in English.

Has Taiwan achieved its full independence? A question you’ll be wondering. Clearer is Taiwan’s recognition as a self-ruling government by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Full independence is seen as debatable.

Liao was single-minded in finding her father’s childhood “ancestral home” in the village of Silai. A “palatial palace,” as Thomas’ family was wealthy, explaining how he (and his older brother Joshua) earned their doctoral educations in America at Ohio State University, where he met her grandmother Anna, promising her a “glamorous, easy life in Asia.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

To give you a sense of how difficult it was to navigate around Taiwan, look no further than Silai. Liao explains at the end that she stayed true to “how my family spelled it.” You’ll need to search other names for the town – Siluo or Xiluo – to find some references cited like Yanping Road, the old main street, and a dramatic bright red bridge that crosses over the Zhuoshui River, of historical and cultural significance.

Remarkable all the coincidences that kept breaking through the silence. For instance, what’s the chance that after only a few tries Liao finds the absolutely perfect apartment to rent for a year? Owned by a forty-year-old sympathetic woman who suggests they attend a nearby church service, where the newly arrived researcher meets the owner’s sister who tells her about a professor teaching a history class about her grandfather? What’s the chance the professor, Dr. Zhang Yan-xain, wrote the book her aunt gave her? That he’d be the “national expert” on the Taiwanese independence movement?

This pattern of connections continues repeatedly. Liao meets someone who tells/introduces her to another person who leads her to another and so on, like a phone tree.

Thomas’ older brother is the political philosopher. (He was a chemical engineer.) Joshua offers a hopeful yet fantastical message: “Words are mightier than tanks.” His idealism tempered by Kim Liao. The chapter “Knowing and Not Knowing” sums up how she feels about all she’s uncovered and still remains “a mystery to me.”

[Raquel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This amazing and compulsively readable book weaves together the author's quest to learn more about her family's history with accounts of the history itself, a period that is not known well in the US. Liao's grandfather was the leader of the Taiwanese independence movement in the wake of World War II, and decades of silence in her family led her to Taiwan in 2011 to uncover the truth.

The narrative moves between Liao's trip of discovery, which is filled with amazing connections and synchronicities that help lead her to the information she needs, and the past story of her family and their role in the movement. There are some photos interspersed throughout (I wished there were more!) and robust endnotes. Liao's voice is warm, vulnerable, and draws the reader in with its relatability.

An important historical document that's also a truly engaging read. I hope many people will pick this up to start learning about this time in history, as Kim Liao makes for an accessible guide to introduce readers both to modern history and to the importance of learning about our own familial identity.

[Note: The author is a former classmate of mine and a personal friend.]

[Peter A · Rating 5 out of 5]

A touching memoir by a granddaughter in search of the grandfather the world knew, but she did not.

This memoir, both a personal journey and a larger exploration of Taiwanese independence efforts, raises awareness of both individuals and the larger history of Taiwan that has been suppressed, by family and by the state.

Kim Liao is the granddaughter of Thomas Liao, a Taiwanese independence activist and founding leader of the Republic of Taiwan Provisional Government.

When she first became aware that her grandfather, whom her family never talked about, was an individual of renown, she began asking questions. But the silence and rebuff she received spurred her interest. In 2010, as a recipient of a Taiwan Fullbright Award, she spend a year in Taiwan.

This memoir roughly tracks her year in Taiwan, staring with her leap of faith that she’d be able to learn about her family—though dissuaded by the US Liaos—through a cultural exploration, hard language studies, and building a network of people to help her in her research. We experience her realization that this was a difficult search, yet her perseverance to learn not only about her family, but the times, hopes, and fears her family, in particular her grandfather and grandmother, lived through.

Through her journey, she experiences the trauma of a generation that fought for independence and democracy under the Chiang Kai-shek regime, the terror the KMT state inflicted, the punishments of torture and often ten-year-long imprisonment at Jingmei Prison and/or on Green Island. She also uncovered the hidden effects of the KMT state repression on a younger generation, whose parents never talked about political events such as the February 28, 1947, (228) massacre, and thus were ignorant of their history. Also, she discovers, in 2010, the ongoing effort by the KMT government to sanitize the government’s role in the 228 incident and distance Chiang Kai-shek from responsibility. And, how even in the late 1990s to the 2000s, after the end of martial law and the onset of democracy, people were still afraid to talk about the event. One scene, at the end of her year in Taiwan, illustrates this. A relative did not want to talk by phone or Skype about that time, afraid of who might be listening.

The memoir also attempts to understand the grandmother, Anna, and learn more about her background. As a child, the writer only knows her grandmother, and her adopted mother, Miss Banta, a Lutheran missionary in New York City’s Chinatown. Her grandmother never talked about her life before age 12 when she moved to care under Miss Banta—as if she was born at twelve-year-old. But the author does find more about her grandmother’s past, enough to know that her grandmother was the child of a mixed-race relationship, adopted, then sold into marriage at age 12, when she was rescued by Miss Banta. That rough life taught the grandmother how to fend for herself and survive.

It is that ability to survive that helped Grandmother Anna protect her four children with Thomas Liao—in Taiwan under Japanese rule, later under KMT rule; then in Hong Kong after Thomas left for Japan; and finally, in her decision to abandon Thomas to protect her children by returning to the US.

The author was able to draw upon relatives, people who knew Thomas Liao in his hometown of Silai (aka Siluo), and historians, to piece together the lives of both her grandmother and grandfather. But there were disappointments. The author traveled to Japan where her grandfather had been kept in house arrest (circa 1950) until he was forced (by circumstances and family issues) to return to Taiwan (1965), hoping to find a personal diary. He had stored them there before returning to Taiwan, but she discovered that the house had burned down, and all his diaries burned with the house.

Finally, though the author has gone to great lengths to gather and present facts, sometimes in the form of memories, there are places where there are no facts, there is only speculation. As the author declares in her first sentence on her Author’s Notes, “This is a work of creative nonfiction.” Thus, several sections of what her grandmother Anna thought are conjectures.

Overall, a valuable contribution to individuals and the collection of people who kept alive the spark of democracy and self-governance for a generation.

FB. A touching memoir and work of creative nonfiction by a granddaughter in search of the grandfather the world knew, but she did not. It is also a journey of self-discovery of her roots in Taiwan and a story that portrays a generation of individuals committed to democracy and self-governance in Taiwan. A well written and valuable contribution!

[Graham Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tough one to review.

On the one hand, this is a really important story, and the different attitudes of the family members make for a really interesting dynamic.

On the other hand, a lot of the scenes, especially the fictionalized ones, were written in a flat and off way. Dialogue often landed very unnatural. There were also a lot of asides I wanted follow-up on, like her saying multiple people asked why Anna didn't stand with Thomas - all the conversations in the book were very positive and none went close to this avenue. Or, another example, Thomas's org is described as falling out of favor in part due to competition from orgs like Taiwan Youth, but there's no real description of how Taiwan Youth's views diverged from Thomas's org's.

One funny moment: the author describes the pomp and circumstance of Thomas's presidency, noting that even democratic leaders like this sort of thing - but based on the story Thomas wasn't democratically elected by anyone. That whole part needed a little more details too. Was really unclear how many people were actually working with Thomas versus offering broad support.

[Serena Yee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is democracy the truth changing with every election? Super accessible juicy read, raised so many questions for me.
- How do I begin asking my parents what they and their friends were doing during the White Terror period?
- What would it take for me to uproot my life as an American?
- Could I do what Anna did for her children (or even for myself)?

[Jac · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much about Taiwan, the Taiwanese democracy movement, and humanity in general through this fabulously written and captivating book.

Part travelogue, part history, part family memoir, the book was so fascinating.

So many lessons relevant in the current geopolitical climate - what is the real price of taking a stand for what you believe in?

[Peggy Padelt · Rating 5 out of 5]

riveting

This is my favorite genre. Love history and she is great at delivering. Loved hearing of her journey which was probably harder than anyone could imagine. Can’t wait to read more from this author.

[Emily Price · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the topic but many of the POV passages seemed fictional, based on author's speculation of how these people thought and acted.

[Linus Chang]

Read to p180

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book!!

Likes:
- I love the balance between referring to intimate family history and then zooming out and reporting on history from a macro balance. I think Kim does a great job of humanizing the characters but also helping us understand what's happening historically. This approach also helps us see the main characters (like Thomas) as humans - including their motivations and strengths and what a great leader he is, but also their flaws. Through this, there's a clear theme of the trade-off between fighting for your country/standing up for what you believe in vs. taking care of your family. I think by alternating between the intimate family history and the macro history of what's happening at the time, Kim helps us understand this trade-off more.
- Ok Thomas's wife/Kim's grandmother (I think Ann? I read this a couple of months ago now so can't 100% remember) is the REAL hero of the story. She moved her family across continents and raised four kids!!
- I really believe in fate and it seems like fate was really on Kim's side in this journey!! I love that as the reader, we're following Kim on her search to learn more about Thomas. I appreciated that she was honest about how little she knew going into it initially - that really helped me trust her and root for her as she uncovered more about her family. I felt like I was on the journey with her.
- I really relate with her desire to know more about your family but also trying to be respectful and not make people too uncomfortable (but while still wanting to know more!!)
- Kim clearly did a ton of research for this book and while she was on this quest - but I like that she reveals the information to the reader in a very manageable and structured way (instead of inundating us with everything she knows in the beginning). The tone of the book is also not pretentious at all and feels very friendly and inviting.

Reading books about Taiwanese Americans has really helped me learn more about Taiwan, especially because I grew up without a lot of formal sources of Taiwanese history, culture, etc.