The Translator's Daughter

podcastOPTalksBooks
Written By Open Plaza

Rev. Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin talks with Grace Loh Prasad about her recent memoir, living between languages, navigating loss, and the search for belonging

Sunrise in Taiwan (1934)  by Fujishima Takeji. Oil on canvas. Source/Photographer: 「日本現代美術全集 7 青木繁・藤島武二」集英社、1972年 [Complete Works of Japanese Contemporary Art 7 Shigeru Aoki and Takeji Fujishima (Shueisha, 1972)]. Image and caption source: Wikimedia Commons

 
 

In this episode of OP Talks, Rev. Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin, talks with writer Grace Loh Prasad about her debut memoir The Translator’s Daughter (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press, 2024) and her life as the daughter of professor parents in Taiwan during the era of White Terror. Prasad’s father, a polyglot who was the first Taiwanese PhD graduate from Princeton Theological Seminary, translated for the United Bible Societies. Her mother descends from the first Christian Convert in Taiwan. Prasad talks about living in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States, and being a “third culture kid,” her asterisked American identity, and metaphysical homelessness.

 

SUGGESTED READING

BOOK REVIEW: Lin, Tony Tian-Ren. "A Permanent Foreigner." The Christian Century, 25 July 2024.

 
 

"...The Translator's Daughter is a delicately wrought reckoning with her Taiwanese identity and its dependence on her parents.... Prasad writes with quiet confidence as she probes her past."

Priyanka Champaneri,
Washington Independent Review of Books

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Grace Loh Prasad

Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press, 2024), her debut memoir. Prasad has been named a finalist for both the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the Black Lawrence Press Immigrant Writing Series. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Longreads, The Offing, Hyperallergic, Guernica, Literary Hub, Catapult, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. She is a member of The Writers Grotto and Seventeen Syllables, an Asian American Pacific Islanders writers collective. Prasad lives in the Bay Area.

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Tony Lin

Rev. Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin is a Research Professor at New York Theological Seminary. He is a cultural sociologist whose scholarship focuses on the intersection of religion, immigration, race, and ethnicity. He is the author of Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), which Publisher’s Weekly praises as a “well-reasoned,” “evocative debut” that “immerse[s] readers in the lives of his subjects.” He was previously a Research Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia where he held numerous academic and administrative positions. Rev. Dr. Lin was born in Taiwan and grew up in Argentina. He holds a bachelor degree from Boston University, a Master of Divinity and Master of Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Master and Doctor of Philosophy in sociology from the University of Virginia. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister who has served churches in New Jersey and Virginia. His work has been featured in The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, LatinoUSA, WNYC, and other venues.

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