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China Adoption Book Review Series: Kids Like Me in China

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What does a nine-year-old think and feel about her adoption? What thoughts and feelings does she have on revisiting the orphanage where she lived during the first year of her life and meeting her caregivers? My recent China Adoption Book Review Series (The Lost Daughters of China, China Ghosts, and Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son Parts One, Two, and Three, has covered writings by adoptive parents and from researchers, journalists and academics into abandonment, orphanage care, and domestic and international adoption in China. With Kids Like Me in China, we get to hear from an adoptee. Ying Ying Fry … Continue reading →

China Adoption Book Review Series: China Ghosts

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Like Karin Evans, author of The Lost Daughters of China, Jeff Gammage is a journalist. His memoir, written seven years after Evans’, is entitled China Ghosts: My Daughter’s Journey to America, my Journey to Fatherhood. The title is apt: while Gammage credits Kay Ann Johnson, author of Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment and Orphanage Care in China with helping him understand the context of his daughter’s story, his own book focuses much more tightly on his story and his daughter’s. Gammage and his wife Christine adopted a two year old in Aug 2002. His memoir is valuable for … Continue reading →

China Adoption Book Report Series: Wanting a Daughter…Part Three

My last two blogs discussed Kay Ann Johnson’s research on abandonment and orphanage care in China and whether Chinese parents desire to adopt girls. This blog continues to explore domestic adoption within China. Johnson and her colleagues have interviewed 1200 Chinese adoptive families. Many of these interviews were in person, locating adoptive families by word of mouth. Johnson says that the procedural paperwork, discrimination, and expense (relative to income) faced by parents adopting internationally is far less than those faced by the Chinese families who adopted children in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Chinese authorities wanted to forestall the … Continue reading →

China Adoption Book Review Series: Wanting a Daughter, Part Two: Chinese Do Adopt Daughters

My last blog shared some of Kay Ann Johnson’s research from her book Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son. This blog continues with more of Johnson’s research, this time in an area which I have never seen addressed in all the reading I’ve done about adoption in China. This topic is the adoption of Chinese foundlings by Chinese parents in China. Johnson began her research interested in the situation of birthparents who abandoned children. She soon discovered a greater interest in what became of the children. Only a minority, she says, (her book was published in 2004) are adopted abroad, … Continue reading →

China Adoption Book Review: Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son

Kay Ann Johnson is a professor of Asian Studies and Politics at Hampshire College. Yet when she adopted her daughter from a Chinese orphanage in 1991, she felt not only the anxiety of participating in what was then a new adoption program, but also a great desire to learn more about her daughter’s story, or at least the story of many girls like her. Why are children, especially girls, abandoned in China? What consequences—emotional and practical—do the birthparents face? Do most foundlings enter the orphanage system? Johnson’s 2004 book, Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption and Orphanage Care … Continue reading →

Book Review: Throwaway Daughter

I read this book with a mixture of fascination and horror. The author of Throwaway Daughter, Ting-Xing Le, lived through the Cultural Revolution in China and worked as a translator before defecting to the West. (Her life story is told in her memoir A Leaf in the Bitter Wind.) Throwaway Daughter, however, is a novel about a Chinese girl adopted to Canada who goes back to look for her Chinese family. The American Library Association listed it on its Best Books for Young Adults, but I would warn parents against giving this volume to children. Parents should read it first … Continue reading →