Arrivals and Departures

Much of Grace Loh Prasad’s needed debut, The Translator’s Daughter, is about the aftermath of a choice she didn’t make. When she was only two years old, her parents fled dictatorship in Taiwan. She grows up in the United States, where a fluency with pop culture is more important than any working understanding of her parents’ native language. But things changed, quickly and unexpectedly when her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, forcing her to confront the fragility of the bonds that tie her to her heritage.

This unpublished piece of Prasad’s memoir happens in between those narrative milestones, in a slice of writing reverent of detail and yet so deft and tight, it sweeps us across oceans and through time with a swiftness that echoes how Prasad must have felt, racing the clock to collect and connect family memories.

Having multilingual parents—including a father who worked as a translator—meant she never had to develop the fluency to navigate Taiwan on visits. But when her parents moved back to Taiwan permanently when