The piece, published on Literary Hub on 26 October 2026, details how the author filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2014 and received two digital folders containing more than a hundred pages of redacted FBI documents concerning her father, Maurice T. Liu.
Liu, born in 1912 in the International Settlement of Shanghai, later worked as a United Nations executive in Connecticut and spent decades shielding his personal history from his family.
Through the released files—field reports, sworn affidavits and telegrams signed by “HOOVER”—the writer reflects on the multiple identities Liu adopted, from a USC acting student named Lee Byron to a UN visitor‑bureau head, and the mystery surrounding his late naturalisation in the United States.
The essay also describes the author’s childhood attempts to decode her father’s silence, her observations of his habits and attire, and how the newly uncovered records informed two novels she later wrote about her Chinese‑American heritage.
While the FBI records remain heavily redacted, the memoir underscores the lingering impact of surveillance on personal narratives and family memory.