Photo courtesy of the author's press kit
Allison Hong Merrill
State: Utah
Allison Hong Merrill is a Taiwanese immigrant. She earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and writes in both Chinese and English, both fiction and nonfiction. Her work appears in the New York Times and has won both national and international literary awards. She is a keynote speaker, an instructor, and a panelist at various writer’s conferences both in the U.S. and in Asia. She also appears on TV, radio, and podcasts; in magazines, newspapers, and journals. She is available nationwide, by arrangement, for interviews, teaching, and speaking engagements.
Genres: Historical Fiction, Memoir
Audiences: Adult, Middle Grade
Books by Allison Hong Merrill
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Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops: A Memoir
Genre: Memoir
Audience: Adult
Allison Hong is not your typical fifteen-year-old Taiwanese girl. Unwilling to bend to the conditioning of her Chinese culture, which demands that women submit to men's will, she disobeys her father's demand to stay in their faith tradition, Buddhism, and instead joins the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then, six years later, she drops out of college to serve a mission—a decision for which her father disowns her.
After serving her mission in Taiwan, twenty-two-year-old Allison marries her Chinese-speaking American boyfriend, Cameron Chastain. But sixteen months later, Allison returns home to their Texas apartment and is shocked to discover that, in her two-hour absence, Cameron has taken all the money, moved out, and filed for divorce. Desperate for love and acceptance, Allison moves to Utah and enlists in an imaginary, unforgiving dating war against the bachelorettes at Brigham Young University, where the rules don't make sense—and winning isn't what she thought it would be.
The Paper Daughters of Chinatown
Genre: Historical Fiction
Audience: Middle Grade
Based on the true story of two friends who unite to help rescue immigrant women and girls in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the late 1890s.
When Tai Choi leaves her home in the Zhejiang province of China, she believes it’s to visit her grandmother. But despite her mother’s opposition, her father has sold her to pay his gambling debts. Alone and afraid, Tai Choi is put on a ship headed for “Gold Mountain” (San Francisco). When she arrives, she’s forced to go by the name on her forged papers: Tien Fu Wu.
Her new life as a servant is hard. She is told to stay hidden, stay silent, and perform an endless list of chores, or she will be punished or sold again. If she is to survive, Tien Fu must persevere, and learn who to trust. Her life changes when she’s rescued by the women at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls.