Standout Authors Unbound amplifies the voices of underrepresented writers and indie authors to disrupt an industry that rewards conformity over authenticity.
There was a book sitting on Henry Eng’s shelf for years.
He could see it. He could hold it. He just couldn’t read it.
His father had written his memoir in Chinese. The story of escaping China during the Cultural Revolution on a rowboat. Three years of manual labor in Hong Kong. A decade of clawing his way back to the life he’d built as a physician.
It was all in there. And Henry couldn’t access any of it.
That quiet distance from his own family’s story is where this chat begins. And what Henry did about it is something I think you’ll find yourself thinking about long after you finish listening.
Highlights
The story that almost stayed hidden.
Henry’s father is 84 years old.
He wrote The Day After Winter more than a decade ago. Got a small publishing run done in China. And then life moved on.
Henry grew up knowing the outline of his family’s story. His great-great-grandfather came to America as a coolie and helped build the railroads. His grandparents trained in the US and founded China’s premier eye hospital. His mother became one of the most cited ophthalmologists in the world, close to 700 publications, her own Wikipedia page.
And his father escaped China on a rowboat during the Cultural Revolution with seven people and a plan that almost didn’t happen.
But knowing the outline and knowing the story are two very different things.
“He worked in construction, he worked in restaurants, he did whatever it took to finally scrape enough money to get over, first to Canada, where they reunited and eventually had me.”
The happy ending was always there. What wasn’t there were all the impossible decisions it took to get there.
The gap between translation and storytelling.
When Google Translate got good enough, Henry finally got a rough version of the book in English.
And he realized something.
His father had written around the most important moments. There were brief mentions of all seven siblings, most of whom never appear again. There were gaps where questions should have been answered. Things left out because they felt so obvious to his father that he never thought a reader would need them explained.
“I had to ask questions that his original narrative didn’t address.”
A few of those stories show you the difference between idealistic and realistic.
When his father’s escape was disrupted, one of the seven people had already gone ahead to the meeting point. When the plan fell apart, his father had to make a call.
He left him behind.
Another story: a professor’s family had secretly given his mother money to help buy a boat. They wanted to come along. There was no room.
They left them behind too.
“My father was very matter of fact about it. But these things didn’t surface in the original writing. I had to link the actions to the consequences.”
That’s the work Henry had to do. Not just translate words. Excavate the truth underneath them.
One conversation changed everything.
Here’s something I think a lot of us can relate to.
You know a story needs to change. You know it could be better. But it’s not your story to change.
Henry felt that tension deeply. These were his father’s words. His mother’s memories. Who was he to rewrite any of it?
So he asked.
“I felt nervous about it. I was like, do you mind if I delete this chapter? Do you mind if I change your words? Because it’s your story at the end of the day.”
His father said yes. Immediately. Do whatever you need to do.
“I think that unlocked a lot for me. I felt way more freedom to create something I believed in.”
That one conversation. That’s all it took.
Sometimes the permission we’re waiting for is closer than we think.
Writing became the channel for questions he couldn’t ask any other way.
Henry took a sabbatical from his job in biotech to finally finish the manuscript.
And something unexpected happened.
The book became a reason to go deeper with his parents than he ever had. To ask things that would have felt too heavy, too intrusive, outside of this context.
Like why his father barely wrote to his mother during the three years they were separated in different countries.
It turned out to be intentional. His father was afraid that if he stayed too connected, she would come back to Hong Kong. He didn’t want to be the reason she gave up her chance.
“I learned so much through the process about the tough decisions they had to make along the way. These are things that could be hard to ask one’s parent or anybody really. You’re resurfacing trauma. But it gave me a channel and an avenue to do so.”
The memoir gave him permission to go to places the conversation alone never could.
He never thought of himself as a writer, until he was.
Henry’s background is Wall Street and biotech. Not exactly the resume you’d expect from someone rewriting a family memoir.
But his parents sent him to writing camp as a kid. His English was strong where theirs wasn’t. He hated it at the time.
Later, he started sneaking writing back into his work life. Monthly updates for his team, always opened with a story. His colleagues weren’t used to it. They kept showing up for it.
“I think what drives a lot of anything really is just great storytelling. When you want to get people moving behind something, whether it be a work initiative or just because they like to read a book, you need good storytelling.”
He never stopped being a writer. He just had to find his way back.
Never give up, but face what’s actually in front of you.
I asked Henry to give me one phrase that captures his father’s story.
He told me about Admiral Stockdale, a POW in Vietnam for seven years. Someone asked Stockdale how he survived. His answer was surprising.
The optimists were the ones who broke. They told themselves they’d be out by Christmas. By Easter. By next year. And when those days came and went, it crushed something in them.
“You have to always believe that you’re going to make it out. But you also have to have the discipline to confront the reality that’s in front of you today.”
That’s his father in a sentence. He never gave up, never pretended away what was hard. He just kept moving through each challenge until he found his way out.
The Substack that turned into something he didn’t plan for.
Henry started writing on Substack because building a platform is part of the publishing game now. That was the practical reason.
But it became something else.
“I started to realize that this process has been a process of me understanding my parents better. And as a result, understanding how they chose to parent me and understanding myself better as a person. And at the very last, understanding how I want to be a father to my kids.”
He didn’t intend for that. The arc just appeared as he kept writing.
A publisher even suggested his Substack could become a second book. His father’s story first, then Henry’s story of inheriting it, and maybe one day his own children adding their chapter.
“I just found that to be really interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way previously.”
That’s what writing does. It takes you somewhere you didn’t know you were going.
How do you make your story stand out?
Before finishing the manuscript, Henry read every memoir and nonfiction book he could find about China from the 1930s to the 1990s.
Not to copy anyone but to understand the landscape. To find what was missing.
The pattern he kept seeing: books that felt more like history lessons than stories. Narratives that gave everything equal weight, so nothing actually landed.
“How can you delightfully surprise your readers?”
That’s the question he kept returning to. When you reveal the story, how do you let the cinematic moments breathe instead of rushing past them to get to the next fact?
“The ability to stand out needs to go beyond just the facts of the story itself. It needs to go to how you reveal certain things at certain moments. How you gain the trust of the audience.”
Closing Reflection
Henry just wants to put something in his father’s hands.
That’s the thing underneath all of it. The querying, the rejections, the platform building, the questions asked late in life that should have been asked sooner.
His father is 84. The publishing process moves slowly. And Henry is not willing to wait.
“My goal is just to get something in his hands. I think it’ll be meaningful for all of us as a family.”
If you’ve got a story like this sitting somewhere, a story that belongs to someone who lived through something extraordinary and never quite got to tell it the way let us know in the comments.
You don’t have to be a writer to start. You just have to go first.
Thank you Tomesha Campbell, Steena Hernandez, Sophia Chang, Chi-Chao Eng, and many others for tuning into my live video with Henry Eng!
