The Lost Daughters of China by Karin Evans Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Lost Daughters of China
Book Review: beautifully written
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is so eloquently written I had a hard time putting it down. The author does an extraordinary job of explaining the political and historical reasons that infant girls are given up to orphanages in China, and does so in a way that leaves the reader empathetic and understanding, rather than judging and condemning. The facts of this book are interspersed with the author's own emotional experience of adopting her daughter from China. Her thoughts and recollections are extrememly moving, and help to answer questions that linger in an adoptive parent's heart. I consider this book a very important part of my preparations to adopt a baby girl from China -- I have also sent copies to friends who are adopting their daughters from the country. An excellent book all around!Book Review: I Want to Adopt in China
Summary: 4 Stars
I really enjoyed this book and it increased my desire to adopt a little girl from China. The only problem I had with this book is that some of the stories were repeated and I had to stop and think "Okay, she mentioned that in Chapter 2" and go on. When she describes the day she picked up her new daughter and cried upon taking her in her arms, I cried too. If you are considering adoption in China, start with this book.Book Review: excellent and thoughtful insight
Summary: 5 Stars
My wife and I adopted our oldest daughter from Tonglu, Zhejiang, China in August, 1995. It was a wonderful experience and I am forever grateful to my daughter's birthmother, her orphanage caretakers and even the Chinese government for making my family possible.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.
Book Review: Compeling Memoir of Chinese Adoption
Summary: 5 Stars
It's not often you find a fun read that is also a page turner. I could have read this book in one sitting! Karin Evans has written a beautiful story about her adoption experience. She also explores Chinese culture and discusses what it must be like for a Chinese woman to give up or even abandon her daughter. I chose this book because of my interest in Chinese culture (my boyfriend is Chinese) and I was not disappointed. Karin chronicles her struggle to get through the paperwork and the long wait to adopt her beautiful daughter. The book made me laugh & cry and it will touch you deeply.
Book Review: A Remarkable Exploration into the World of Adoption in China
Summary: 5 Stars
Once in a great while I have the good fortune to discover a book whose home on my bed table is more or less permanent. Such a work is "The Lost Daughters of China" by Karin Evans, journalist, mother of two, and explorer of the landscape of China adoptions. The pages are dog-eared; notes line the margins. I pick it up again and again, finding something new each time.At first I found the title alarming, too blatant and raw for what I perceived to be Sensitive Topic #1 at our house, but the narrative compelled me each time. Evans chronicles the journey she and husband Mark took toward their daughter Kelly Xiao Yu and, in the telling, illuminates many of the unlit passages we all know too well of such an adoption tale.
With meticulous and extensive detail, Evans goes both wide and deep in her exploration of how the miracle of her family came to be. She leaves no stone unturned as she examines the forces of poverty, history, famine, population control, misogyny and the history of infanticide that have brought this special child into her arms. Along the way, there are interviews with China adoption scholars, social scientists and writers, bits of modern poetry by Chinese women, quotes from the Buddha and Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes. She talks of those who are left behind, the work going on to improve life in China's orphanages, the sorority of "cousins" that is growing through FCC and the network of families whose lives will be intertwined through their daughters' lives forever. As Evans states, "I have never anywhere met a more grateful or happier group of parents." The rich tapestry that is our daughters' cultural heritage is interwoven with the harsh realities of their beginnings, giving fertile soil in which to grow their stories and mandating us to stick together through it all.
Evans' narrative is all of ours, and yet it is hers exclusively. Caught in a bureaucratic snafu of simple bad timing, she is forced to spend nearly two years awaiting a referral. Finally it comes, but her joy is made bittersweet by the untimely death of the beloved father who adopted her years earlier. Still overwhelmed by grief, Evans and her husband leave for China a scant week later, knowing that their new daughter will bear his name. She fantasizes the story of her daughter's birthmother--her desperation, her poverty, her utter lack of control--imagining the courage and love it took to deliver this child into unknown, but hopefully better circumstances.
With compassion, sensitivity and intellect, the author peers into the unknowable corners of Chinese adoption, shedding light where she can, probing the possibilities, or sometimes simply embracing the darkness, holding the questions and turning them over, again and again. This exercise seemed almost futile to me at first, then a shock of recognition flooded over me and it was familiar. For this is how I explore, in ever-changing ways, how to talk about her past with my own growing daughter as her understanding and her mind continue to expand. As Evans quotes the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, "The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
As I felt pulled between opposing poles of identifying with Evans' tale and feeling oddly taken aback by it, I was struck by the fact that this exact dynamic is, for me, the beauty of this book. It is the experience of diversity itself, that no matter how much we love and identify with our daughters, we must also realize, every day, how different they and their lives truly are from our own. So I made friends with the title, letting its truth sink in: that my daughter's past before the orphanage is truly lost to her, and she in turn is truly lost to the birthmother who gave her life and love before I could. She once was lost, before she was found, and a piece of her may be grappling with this fact forever. In embracing this harsh truth, I embrace the diversity that is our family, and whenever I lose track, "The Lost Daughters of China" is right there to remind me.