Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love - Softcover

Xinran

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451610947 ISBN 13: 9781451610949

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 2012

Synopsis

Now in paperback one of the most stirring accounts of the lives of Chinese women since Wild Swans "full of heart-rending tales....shocking, simply told...a very powerful polemic" (The New York Times Book Review).

Following her internationally bestselling book The Good Women of China, Xinran has written one of the most powerful accounts of the lives of Chinese women. She has gained entrance to the most pained, secret chambers in the hearts of Chinese mothers--students, successful businesswomen, midwives, peasants--who, whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions, or hideous economic necessity, have given up their daughters. 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; naïve young girl students who have made life-wrecking mistakes; the "pebble mother" on the banks of the Yangtze 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.

For parents of adopted Chinese children and for the children themselves, this is an indispensable, powerful, and intensely moving book. Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother is powered by love and by heartbreak and will stay with readers long after they have turned the final page.

About this title

Review:

"This collection is powerful and heartbreaking. It's a must-read for families who have adopted children from China, as well as for anyone who has an interest in what women's lives are like in the economic powerhouse China has become." -Lisa See

"A touching book...[Xinran] gives voice to the silent heartbreak of tens of thousands of Chinese women." --New York Post

Book Description:

An extraordinarily powerful collection of heartbreaking, shocking stories, including Xinran's own experience, of Chinese mothers who have lost or had to abandon their daughters and are still searching...

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1451610947
• ISBN 13: 9781451610949
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272