Warmth Across Borders: Caregiving Through the Eyes of Borrowed Grandpa
莉莉 Ririn Arumsari Home-care worker from Java, Indonesia; author of Borrowed Grandpa
Coming from Java, Indonesia, with a dream kindled by the Taiwanese drama Meteor Garden, Lily spent nearly a decade supporting Taiwanese families as a professional carer — speaking fluent Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien — while writing down her migrant life on a tiny phone screen. Her debut novel, Borrowed Grandpa, captures the loneliness of old age and the understanding and affection that slowly grow between carer and cared-for.
Topics we'll explore
- How a decade of migrant life in Taiwan became material for writing
- Language, song and the quiet work of caregiving beside an isolated elder
- From an employment contract to borrowed family: bonds that form without bloodlines
- Loneliness, pressure and the professional needs of caregivers