One journalist spoke out about finally daring to start using her proper byline. Thousands of readers have responded with their own stories about identity and belonging
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Marian Chia-Ming Liu is a journalist and the projects editor at the Washington Post. But that has not always been her byline.
She has for a long time just been credited as Marian Liu, sacrificing an important piece of her identity to avoid awkward conversations about how to pronounce or spell her full Chinese name, which has, in fact, a lot of personal, family significance for her.
That was until last year when she was witnessing racist hate crimes against the Asian community in America. It motivated her to write about her struggles with fitting into society as a child from an immigrant family, and to stop self-censoring her full and truly authentic byline.
The response to that piece has been emphatic. The Washington Post has seen a record callout, receiving thousands of similar accounts of butchered pronunciations and adopting Anglicised names.
In this week's episode, Chia-Ming Liu joins us to talk about reclaiming her identity and opting for a more authentic byline. It goes to show the impact journalists can have when they share their personal experience.
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