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Family & Relationships Adoption & Fostering

The Lucky Ones

Our Stories of Adopting Children from China

edited by Ann Rauhala

foreword by Jan Wong

Publisher
ECW Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2008
Category
Adoption & Fostering, Personal Memoirs
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781550228236
    Publish Date
    Apr 2008
    List Price
    $19.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781554903207
    Publish Date
    Apr 2008
    List Price
    $11.95

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Description

 

“What a lucky girl!” Everybody who has adopted a daughter from China has heard that one. And every parent has said, or thought, in reply: “No, we’re the lucky ones.” This anthology sets out to explain why people who have adopted children from China feel as though they’ve won the lottery.

Since the late 1980s, as many as 7,000 Chinese-born girls have been adopted annually and now live in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. They are officially orphans, victims of a rigorous birth control policy limiting most families to one child. These thousands of girls have formed an international Diaspora, a human wave with no exact parallel and yet numerous points of comparison — sharing issues with war orphans from Vietnam or even with Chinese workers who built the New World’s railroads.

The memoirs collected in The Lucky Ones are organized beginning with infertility, moving to acceptance of a multiracial family, anticipating the adoption, reflecting during the trip to China and, at last, grappling with an odd destiny — turning terrible beginnings into happy endings.

The story of these girls is compelling as a narrative of hope and optimism but it may also become a story of dislocation and crisis of identity. These baby immigrants add unusual texture to the lives of the families they join — they come here not by choice but by someone else’s design.

 

About the authors

Ann Rauhala's profile page

Jan Wong is the author of five non-fiction bestsellers, including Out of the Blue and Red China Blues, which was named one of Time magazine's top ten non-fiction books of 1996. (Twenty years later, the book is still in print.) She has won numerous journalism awards and is now a professor of journalism at St. Thomas University. A third-generation Canadian, Jan is the eldest daughter of a prominent Montreal restaurateur.

Jan Wong's profile page