Now in paperback one of the most stirring accounts of the lives of
Chinese women since Wild Swans "full of heart-rending tales....shocking,
simply told...a very powerful polemic" (The New York Times Book
Review).Following her internationally bestselling book The Good Women of
China, Xinran has written one of the most powerful accounts of the lives
of Chinese women. She has gained entrance to the most pained, secret
chambers in the hearts of Chinese mothers--students, successful
businesswomen, midwives, peasants--who, whether as a consequence of the
single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions, or hideous economic
necessity, have given up their daughters. Xinran beautifully portrays
the "extra-birth guerrillas" who travel the roads and the railways,
evading the system, trying to hold on to more than one baby; naïve young
girl students who have made life-wrecking mistakes; the "pebble mother"
on the banks of the Yangtze River still looking into the depths for her
stolen daughter; peasant women rejected by their families because they
can't produce a male heir; and Little Snow, the orphaned baby fostered
by Xinran but confiscated by the state. For parents of adopted Chinese
children and for the children themselves, this is an indispensable,
powerful, and intensely moving book. Message from an Unknown Chinese
Mother is powered by love and by heartbreak and will stay with readers
long after they have turned the final page.
