Event
Breaking Silences: Using Intimate Biography to Uncover the Lives of Thomas Wen Yi Liao and Mary Mon Toy
Kim Liao, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY)
Marnie Mueller, Novelist
Moderator: Megan Marshall, Emerson College
This is a hybrid event. The in-person reception will begin at 4:15 PM.
This program’s guests—a first-time author and a veteran novelist—spent decades researching family histories shadowed by war, global politics, and anti-Asian racism. Kim Liao discovered a many-layered story suppressed both in her family and by the Taiwanese government featuring her grandfather, a leader of the Taiwanese independence movement after World War II. Marnie Mueller, born in a Japanese American concentration camp in 1942 and later befriended by Mary Mon Toy, a talented “showgirl” incarcerated in a different camp, became her friend’s executor. After Mon Toy’s death in 2009, a hidden life story emerged that begged to be told alongside Mueller’s own long-concealed history. Learn about “intimate biography” from two authors who are inventing the form.
Join the conversation at the New England Biography Series. By providing an opportunity for those interested in the craft of biography to convene and converse, this series creates a community that will support biographical works in progress and help inspire future projects. Learn more.
Purchasing a $25 seminar subscription allows you to support the seminar series. Subscribe at www.masshist.org/research/seminars.
Hybrid Event
The in-person reception starts at 4:15 PM and the program will begin at 5:00 PM.
Masks are optional for this event.
The virtual program begins at 5:00 PM and will be hosted on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive a confirmation message with attendance information.
By registering you are agreeing to abide by the MHS Visitor Code of Conduct.
