Join us for a special evening at The Ruby (in the Mission District, SF) that will combine writing, conversation, and play! Writer Grace Loh Prasad will kick off the evening by reading an excerpt from her new memoir, The Translator’s Daughter. This will be followed by a conversation between Grace and Nicole Wong, founder of The Mahjong Project, centered on how their work deals with themes of memory, cultural identity, diaspora and reclaiming heritage.
And then, we’ll play mahjong! All levels are welcome and encouraged to join. There will be space for beginners (with instruction led by Nicole), seasoned players, and options for various styles of play from the Asian diaspora. We’ll have snacks and refreshments to keep us energized, and Grace will be happy to sign books.
Books will be available for purchase from Dog Eared Books!
About The Translator’s Daughter
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. But when her parents moved back to Taiwan permanently when she was in college 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.
About Grace Loh Prasad
Grace Loh Prasad is the author of the memoir The Translator’s Daughter (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press, 2024). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Longreads, The Offing, Hyperallergic, Catapult, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. A member of the Writers Grotto and the AAPI writers collective Seventeen Syllables, Prasad lives in the Bay Area.
About Nicole Wong and The Mahjong Project
Nicole Wong is a writer and audio producer based in Oakland. Her parents immigrated from New Zealand in the 1980s to Santa Monica, California. About five years ago, while cleaning out the family garage, she rediscovered the mahjong table they’d brought over with them along with a few extra sets of tiles. Nicole started working on The Mahjong Project in 2019 - part instructional guide, part oral history project, to document her family’s house rules for playing, while also seeking to place the way we play in the broader history and diaspora of the game itself.
Learn more about The Mahjong Project at www.themahjongproject.com and @themahjongproject on Instagram.