|
|
|
Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother
|
| |
|
Author:
|
|
Xinran & Xinran Xinran
|
|
Subtitle:
|
|
Stories of Loss and Love
|
|
ISBN:
|
|
9780701184032
|
|
ISBN-10:
|
|
0701184035
|
|
Publisher:
|
|
Random House Publishers
|
|
Date Published:
|
|
4/02/2010
|
|
Format:
|
|
Paperback Book
|
|
Pages:
|
|
224
|
|
Language:
|
|
English
|
|
| RRP: |
$36.95 |
| PRICE: |
$34.73
|
| Earn 34.73 Points |
|
|
|
|
Book Description: Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother is made up of the stories of Chinese mothers whose daughters have been wrenched from them, and also brings us the voices of some adoptive mothers from different parts of the world. These are stories which Xinran could not bring herself to tell previously - because they were too painful and close to home. In the footsteps of Xinran's Good Women of China, this is personal, immediate, full of harrowing, tragic detail but also uplifting, tender moments. Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women - students, successful business women, midwives, peasants, all with memories which have stained their lives. 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 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.
Here are the 'extra-birth guerrillas' who travel the roads and the railways, evading the system, trying to hold onto more than one baby; naive young student girls who have made life-wrecking mistakes; the 'pebble mother' on the banks of the Yangzte still looking into the depths for her stolen daughter; peasant women rejected by their families because they can't produce a male heir; and finally there is Little Snow, the orphaned baby fostered by Xinran but 'confiscated' by the state. The book sends a heartrending message from their birth mothers to all those Chinese girls who have been adopted overseas (at the end of 2006 there were over 120,000 registered adoptive families for Chinese orphans, almost all girls, in 27 countries), to show them how things really were for their mothers, and to tell them they were loved and will never be forgotten. Born in Beijing in 1958, Xinra ... |
Stock Availability:
This title will be ordered from the publisher. Usually ships in 10 - 15 days. Publisher may be out of stock in which case we will advise you. Allow a few extra days for delivery.
|
|
Review by Jessica
Xinran, a female journalist in China, discovers and follows the stories of various Chinese women that have had to abandon or kill their baby daughters, and then the stories of daughters who've been abandoned.
This book filled me with disbelief, wonder, loss and exhaustion, but more than anything else: love. The stories within are born from tragic oppression, but all reveal the intrinsic love between mothers and daughters. Heartbreakingly so.
Powerful and sad, this book is an amazing read. Read this if you are or you have a mother. You just must.
| |
|
