Part memoir, part family history, Escape from Taiwan recounts Chiufang’s journey to understand the historical events that informed her upbringing, and how in the process it gave her a greater appreciation for the ideals represented by the Statue of Liberty to generations of immigrants.
Chiufang Hwang, M.D. was born in Taiwan but came to the US as a toddler so her father could pursue a PhD. Usually the only Asian kid on the block growing up in Columbia, SC, she was outwardly shy but inwardly eager to absorb the culture of her adopted country. It wasn’t until she met Janine that Chiufang would identify her own inner-American by embracing the melting pot of cultures she encountered
Grown-Up Child chronicles Chiufang’s occasionally poignant, often funny, and always insightful experiences as the daughter of immigrants, straddling two cultures. Her story, told with wry wit and brutal honesty, is especially resonant now as the place and value of immigrants in American society has come under question.
In 1999, Chiufang Hwang tried out for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on a whim, and the experience was an epiphany. “That day in Texas Stadium, I finally understood what I had missed out on in high school and college growing up as the eldest daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. I felt so special. I felt included. I felt more like a teenage girl than when I was one. But mostly, I felt so American."