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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.
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Customer Reviews
It's fairly short and I felt maybe there could have been more but then again, how much more do we need to be told about the abandonment of baby girls? It did show the side of the mothers which I was pleased about - they're not treated as heinous because of what they felt they had to do.
It hasn't dampened my quest for reading more about China and Xinran is certainly someone whose books I would return to for help in that.
Xinran's highly approachable books are an excellent introduction to the way the Chinese think and feel, frequently very differently to the way we do in the West.
Thier ingrained traditions, desperate poverty and single-child-policy, have all played a part in the tragic death of many thousands of baby girls over the years and it is important that we understand the reasons for this awful situation before we judge.
Over the years Xinran has interviewed hundreds of mothers and the ten tragic stories in this book represent the core of their experiences. Often hard to read but written in an easily accessible style, Xinran leads us through the reasons for the decisions these poor mothers were forced to take.
She is particularly focused on the Chinese girls who have been adopted over recent years, she really wants them to understand that they were not abandoned lightly, that each one of them was loved by their mothers and that putting their daughters up for adoption was frequently the only way to save them.
We read this for a book group discussion, which gained its own momentum and flushed out many of the ideals and reasons for this huge tragedy.
There are several appendicies, which I didn't think added much to the book, hence the 4 stars.
I also went on the internet to research The Mothers' Bridge of Love charity, formed to help adopted Chinese girls and their adopted parents understand their situations and possibly make connection with the lost mothers, but it seemed to have been discontinued in 2010 and I couldn't find anything more recent.
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