Yvonne Liu is a Los Angeles-based writer who has published in the New York Times, Salon, Newsweek, NBC News, elsewhere. Over 1.5 million people read her HuffPost essay on why she kept her adoption a secret for over 60 years. She writes about mental health, childhood trauma, adoption, and Asian American experiences. Yvonne writes to help the voiceless. As an abandoned Hong Kong newborn who languished in an orphanage, she was voiceless. As a daughter of an adoptive mother with a severe mental illness and a violent father, she found herself voiceless. The NYT Modern Love podcast featured Yvonne. Readers of her work and listeners worldwide said they cried, but also found hope in Yvonne’s journey. She is writing a memoir to encourage others who experienced trauma. Yvonne is a Tin House Workshop and VONA alum. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram at @yvonneliuwriter.
The earthquake felt like everything then. Big news, the kind no one forgets. But it all blurs and fades. I don't know if I'd even remember it at all if I hadn't been answering the phones.
Little bits of The Unnamed are stuck in my head. A man clinging to a telephone pole in a flood. A daughter and her father on a bench in Tompkins Square Park. A sense of loss. A sense of isolation.