Title: Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother
Author: Xinran
Translator: Nicky Harman
Genre: Non-fiction (Dewey 306.8743 - Cultures/Mothers)
Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2010
209p
Stories of love and loss: Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran takes us right into the lives of Chinese women - students, successful business women, midwives, peasants, 'extra-birth guerillas' - all with memories that have stained their lives.. Whether as a consequence of the one-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity, some women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them - on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages or on station platforms - and others even had to watch their baby daughters being taken away at birth and drowned.
The book sends a heart-rending message from their birth mothers to all those Chinese girls who have been adopted overseas, to show them how things really were for their mothers, and to tell them they were loved and will not be forgotten.
The author: Xinran was born in Beijing in 1958 and became a journalist and radio presenter in China. In 1997 she moved to London, where she wrote her best selling bookThe Good Women of China. Her charity, The Mother's Bridge of Love, was founded to help disadvantaged Chinese children and to build a bridge of understanding between the West and China.
A book that will make your heart weep!
A book that will leave you filled with gratitude for a life that allows you to welcome your little girl with joy!
I might have to do this one too. This aspect of Chinese culture and history has become increasingly interesting to me the more that my country becomes dependent on China and the more that I see some of our laws leaning toward similar legislation to that which causes these little girls to be unwanted.
ReplyDeleteThose who are adopted are the lucky ones. Of course the subject of adoption also interests me as an adoptee.
I found parts of this book almost too horrifying to believe. The little adopted ones are lucky - lucky to be alive. Very sad!
ReplyDeleteI already feel sad by reading that, I can't even imagine how it would be
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