Status Updates From The Translator's Daughter: ...

“Maybe the language where I live is not the end point but an interval - a rest stop on the way home.”

“I am the eternal daughter, destined to go back and forth between my husband in California and my parents in Taiwan, between the life consciously chosen and the collective unconscious that claims me, an unbreakable thread connecting me to my ancestors. I live in a constant state of longing to be reunited with Demeter-my mother, motherland, mother tongue. My life is defined by this rupture.”

“I have bizarre sensation of going forward in linear time yet backward in consciousness, reaching for a distant, earlier version of myself that once felt at home here.”

It’s interesting that there are a few Asian American memoirs whose titles are focused not on the author but their parents. “Manicurist’s Daughter”, “Translator’s Daughter”.

“I wasn’t used to hearing my parents fight; when they did it was usually in Taiwanese. I wondered if they were speaking English only because I was there.”
The whole switch to the commonly understood language in the group is too real

“I lost my native tongue, but I gained freedom of speech.”

This failure brings a feeling of shock and anguish, like realizing you can't quite conjure up the face of a loved one. It is blank where there ought to be something meaningful, and—you imag-ine-unforgettable, and before long, you distance yourself from it, give up, as if those memories were someone else's and not your own.

It plays like the music of dreams, a sweet melody from childhood that is clear and complete and comforting, but it fades so quickly upon waking that you are surprised by the loss of what seemed so familiar. What was a symphony is reduced to a few haunting notes, from which you try in vain to recreate the whole.