Moderator---Shellie
According to the State Department's Intercountry Adoption site, there have been 78,257 children from China adopted by Americans. A full 86% of those adoptees have been female. This work of fiction gives an inside view of what such an adoption might look like but with a twist. The Chinese child is adopted by an American single woman who is of Chinese descent. And therein lies the problem.
Ari, the 'lost daughter of China' was born in the Year of the Sheep and abandoned at a department store in Kunming, China. She is adopted by Charlie Kong, a lawyer from San Francisco. Ari becomes a member of a strong female family headed by a Bryn Mawr educated grandmother and an Aunt who is a successful Judge. It seems like a tailor-made situation--Chinese child adopted into a Chinese-American family. What could go wrong?
Mother Charlie follows all the suggestions on making Ari comfortable with the adoption. She has her join a group of other adoptees who have similar circumstances in their background. The group even travels back to China so the girls can see the orphanage that they came from. None of this gives Ari any measure of comfort.
The Kong family have secrets and Ari has a sadness that weighs her down. All of this wears on the family. Ari wants China and the family wants her to go to Bryn Mawr just like her Grandmother. The family struggles with the different dilemmas and decisions Ari puts in their way. And there are plenty of them.
Published in 2014, is author Kathryn Ma's first novel.
Adapted Dining:
Cheese, crackers and meat
tray, potato salad and
Oreo cookies
"Enjoyable, but wished
Mother would have tried other ways
to help troubled daughter."---Shellie
👍🏻
👍🏻
"Compelling reading at first but
ended with a thud. No resolution and lots
of open holes."---Kim
👎🏻
👎🏻
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