The Lost Daughters of China: Abandoned Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past
by Karin Evans

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Book Reviews of The Lost Daughters of China: Abandoned Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past

Book Review: excellent and thoughtful insight
Summary: 5 Stars

Several things were striking about Karin Evans "Lost Daughters of China". First, the striking similarity and commonality of thought that prospective adoptive parents experience before during and after the adoption is amazing. It is as if Karen could read my thoughts about the paperwork anxiety, the diplomatic anxiety, the waiting, the shopping for baby things, the thought that this very baby was destined for us, the thought that my daughter's birthmother loved her so much that she made the supreme sacrifice so that my daughter could live a productive, fruitful and full life, the dealing with ignorant questions from well meaning strangers, etc. etc. Karen does a much better job of translating these thoughts and feelings into words than I have ever been able to do.

Second, Karen Evans as well as many China adoptive parents I have spoken with talk about the extreme difficulty of the adoption in terms of the dossier, the waiting time, multiple snafu's, etc. It is not an easy process under any circumstances. However, for anyone considering a Chinese adoption, and who read this review, use Chinese Children Adoption International (CCAI) in Denver, Colorado. This organization has now completed more that 3,200 adoptions from China as of this writing. People all over the USA have used them. It is run by two wonderful Chinese nationals and I know no one who doesn't give them the most glowing reviews. Karen could have saved months by using CCAI.

Third, unlike several of the reviewers who objected to the speculation about the birthmother's thoughts and state of mind, I appreciated this perspective. For people who have adopted from China and have no history of their daughter at all, informed speculation may be the best we ever have to hold on to regarding our daughter's immediate heritage. I also found the Chinese family profile (the abandoning family) very informative and useful.

Fourth, and this is my only real objection to this book, the idea that adoptive families of Asian children cannot live normal lives irritates me. I have been innundated by authors and lecturers primarily, over the past seven years that continue to remind me how I need to force feed Chinese culture down my daughter's throat. They tell me that because my daughter looks different than her parents, she is going to have all kinds of special issues requiring special treatment ranging from therapy to Mandarin language classes, to learning to use chopsticks, etc.

I think there is some kind of subtle racism at work here. I don't think there would be nearly the furor over the adoption of a baby of Swiss descent by American parents for no other reason than that they would look alike. I tell my daughter that she can be proud of her Chinese heritage and I will support her exploration into her cultural heritage as far as she wants to take it. But, and this is a big but, she is American now. She is as American as I am and as American as her school mates. I have no great affinity towards Britain where my ancestors came from and I don't think she should have her ancestry forced on her anymore than rest of us do. Maybe I am being naive, but I just want to raise my Asian daughters as daughters. I want normalcy. Is that asking too much? Is that impossible? I don't think so.

Regardless, this is a great book. It is an easy read and I recommend it without hesitation.

Summary of The Lost Daughters of China: Abandoned Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past

The elegant prose is spiced with bits of ironic cultural dissonance. A discount shopper, Evans "felt more than a little strange buying China-made [baby] clothes with which to bundle up a tiny baby, one of China's own, and bring her home." On a bus tour through southern China, she is one of a "bunch of Americans with Chinese infants singing 'Que Sera Sera' in the middle of a sea of traffic. Will she be happy? Will she be rich?" To suddenly hear Doris Day over the horns of a Kowloon traffic jam is heady stuff indeed.

The Lost Daughters of China is at its best when describing Evans's tally of emotional loss and gain. At one point the bureaucratic adoption process is unaccountably delayed, but her father dies during that time and she's able to sit by his bedside. The most mysterious example of this emotional calculus is Kelly's birth mother. Evans invents many plausible scenarios that caused this unknown woman to abandon her three-month-old daughter at a market. These incomplete, necessarily provisional stories help give a face to the larger cultural processes that compel new parents to abandon 1.7 million girl babies annually. The stuff of headlines--human rights, infanticide, rural and urban poverty--is rendered personally relevant in Evans's compelling book. --Kathi Inman Berens

Chinese Books

• Books > Subjects > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National
• Children's Books
• History > Asia > China
• Parenting & Relationships > Adoption
• Social Sciences
• Women's Studies