Meet Grace Loh Prasad, Author of The Translator’s Daughter | 作家 Grace Loh Prasad 見面會

Written By: Jenna V. With Foster City Library

On Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 6:00 PM, we're excited to host an in-person author talk at Millbrae Library with Grace Loh Prasad, author of The Translator's Daughter. Grace will be in conversation with fellow local author Sabina Khan-Ibarra of The Poppy Flower. 

All San Mateo County Libraries locations will have free signed copies of The Translator's Daughter available on a first-come, first-served basis. Additionally, limited copies of the book will be available for event attendees.

Mark Your Calendar

Living Between Worlds 

Born in Taiwan, Grace Loh Prasad was two years old when the threat of political persecution under Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship drove her family to the United States, setting her up to become an “accidental immigrant.” The family did not know when they would be able to go home again—this exile lasted long enough for Prasad to forget her native Taiwanese language and grow up American. Having multilingual parents—including a father who worked as a translator—meant she never had to develop the fluency to navigate Taiwan on visits.  

When her parents moved back to Taiwan permanently and her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she recognized the urgency of forging a stronger connection with her birthplace before it was too late. As she recounts her journey to reclaim her heritage in The Translator’s Daughter, Prasad unfurls themes of memory, dislocation and loss in all their rich complexity. The result is a unique immigration story about the loneliness of living in a diaspora, the search for belonging and the meaning of home. 

Praise for The Translator’s Daughter 

"The Translator’s Daughter moves from Taipei to San Francisco and back as if they were rooms of the same house, telling the story of a woman discovering her roots while simultaneously planting new ones as she creates a life on her own terms. Prasad’s sharp intelligence and fierce love for her family are on every page of this beautiful book." — Grace Talusan, The Body Papers

"I love how memoir engages with the art of looking back, of trying to understand who we were, where we truly come from, and how we got to where we are. In The Translator’s Daughter, Grace Loh Prasad looks back with such thoughtfulness, care, and wonder. This is a searching, heartfelt memoir about family, communication, loss, and the very idea of origin stories." — Beth Nguyen, Owner of a Lonely Heart

"Grace Loh Prasad interrogates the distance between the homes we have and the homes we long for with the compassion and precision of one who has spent her entire life attuned to language. 'We were always half a world apart,' she writes; her essays bridge that gap in innovative ways, using family photos, mythical women, and Taiwanese films. Moving fluidly between the personal and the political, this memoir is a remarkable addition to Taiwanese American literature. — Jami Nakamura Lin, The Night Parade

Learn More About Grace

Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter, a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating loss and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Literary Hub, Longreads, Guernica, Brevity, The Offing, Oldster Magazine, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. A member of the Writers Grotto and the AAPI writers collective Seventeen Syllables, Prasad lives in the Bay Area. 

作家 Grace Loh Prasad 見面會
二月十九日星期三 下午六點
密爾布瑞圖書館：壁爐區  

聖馬刁縣圖書館將在二月十九日星期三晚上六點在密爾布瑞圖書館舉辦一場面對面的作家見面會，主講人是《譯者的女兒》 (The Translator’s Daughter)的作者 Grace Loh Prasad。Grace 將與當地作家 Sabina Khan-Ibarra 《罌粟花》(The Poppy Flower) 進行對談。 

聖馬刁縣圖書館, opens a new window所有分館將以先到先得的方式，提供免費的《譯者的女兒》作者親簽書籍。此外，有限數量的免費書籍也將在活動期間，免費提供給活動參加者。 

Grace Loh Prasad 出生於台灣。在她兩歲時，因為蔣介石獨裁統治下的政治迫害，迫使她的家人離開台灣，移居美國，成為了「意外移民」。這段長時間的流亡生活讓 Prasad 漸漸忘記了母語臺灣話，並在美國長大。 她的父母會說多種語言，父親甚至是一位翻譯家，這使得她在訪問台灣時從不需要培養流利的語言能力來應對各種情況。  

當她的父母最終永久回到台灣，而她的母親被診斷出患有阿茲海默症時， Prasad 意識到必須在為時已晚之前，與自己的出生地建立更深的聯繫。她在 《譯者的女兒》(The Translator’s Daughter) 中講述了自己重新學習文化傳統的過程，並探討了記憶、錯位與失落的複雜主題。這使得這本書成為一個關於海外流散孤獨感、尋找歸屬感以及家之意義的獨特移民故事。  

對《譯者的女兒》 (The Translator’s Daughter) 的盛讚  

《譯者的女兒》講述了一位女性一面發掘自己根源，又一面以自己為主體重新扎根的故事，她在台北與舊金山之間往返，就彷彿這兩地是同一座房子的不同房間。 Prasad 敏銳的智慧及對家人的深沉愛意在這本美麗的書中的每一頁都得以體現。— Grace Talusan (The Body Papers)  

我喜歡回憶錄將回顧過去的藝術與探索相結合，試圖了解我們曾經是誰、我們真正來自哪裡，以及我們是如何走到今天的。在《譯者的女兒》中，Grace Loh Prasad 以深思、關懷和驚嘆的眼光回顧過往。這是一本關於家庭、溝通、失落以及起源故事的探索與感人回憶錄。— Beth Nguyen (Owner of a Lonely Heart)  

Grace Loh Prasad 以一位終身與語言相伴的人所具備的同情心與精確度，深刻探討了我們擁有的家與我們渴望的家之間的距離。她寫道：「我們總是相隔半個世界。」她的散文以創新的方式為這道鴻溝架起了橋梁，包括了運用家庭照片、神話女性、台灣電影等元素。這本回憶錄在私人與政治間自如流動，是台美文學中的一部卓越的作品。— Jami Nakamura Lin (The Night Parade)