I’m reading the most heart-wrenching book right now, and I’ve endured nearly every chapter twice. First to myself, and then again aloud to Alex- fighting tears along the way.
“Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother”, by Xinran (Chinese author, journalist and radio host), is a book that documents haunting true stories of Chinese women who have been driven to abandon their daughters or give them up for adoption.
From the book jacket:
“Xinran has gained entrance to the most pained, secret chambers in the hearts of Chinese mothers– students, successful businesswomen, midwives, peasants– who have given up their daughters. Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions, or hideous economic necessity, these women had to give up their daughters for adoption; others even had to watch as their baby daughters were taken away at birth and drowned. Xinran beautifully portrays the “extra-birth guerrillas” who travel the roads and the railways, evading the system, trying to hold on to more than one baby; naive young girl students who have made life-wrecking mistakes; the “pebble mother” on the banks of the Yangzte River still looking into the depths for her stolen daughter; peasant women rejected by their families because they can’t produce a male heir; and Little Snow, the orphaned baby fostered by Xinran but confiscated by the state.”
I highly recommend this book, but it will not leave you unscathed. And you very well might start the process of adoption by the book’s end.
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