BOOKED OUT - Xinran Talks About Her Latest Book - Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

Tuesday, Feb 23, 2010

We are sorry to say that we are now booked out for Xinran's talk detailed below.

We are excited to announce that Xinran will again be speaking at Asia Bookroom. We hope you can join us on Tuesday February 23 at 6pm for what is sure to be a talk to remember.

Xinran's latest book, Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother tells the stories of Chinese mothers whose daughters have been wrenched from them. Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women – students, successful business women, midwives, peasants - all with memories which have stained their lives.

Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity, some women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them - on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages or on station platforms - and others even had to watch their baby daughters being taken away at birth, and drowned.

Here are the ‘extra-birth guerrillas’ who travel the roads and the railways, evading the system, trying to hold onto more than one baby; naive young student girls who have made life-wrecking mistakes; the ‘pebble mother’ on the banks of the Yangzte still looking into the depths for her stolen daughter and peasant women rejected by their families because they can’t produce a male heir. Finally there is Little Snow, the orphaned baby fostered by Xinran but ‘confi scated’ by the state.

The book sends a heartbreaking message from their birth mothers to all those Chinese girls who have been adopted overseas (at the end of 2006 there were over 120,000 registered adoptive families for Chinese orphans, almost all girls, in 27 countries), to show them how things really were for their mothers,
and to tell them that they were loved and will never be forgotten.

Born in Beijing in 1958, Xinran was a journalist and radio presenter in China. In 1997 she moved to London, where she wrote her bestselling book THE GOOD WOMEN OF CHINA. Since then she has written a regular column for the Guardian, appeared on radio and TV and published several other books.

Her charity, The Mothers’ Bridge of Love, was founded to help disadvantaged Chinese children and to build a bridge of understanding between the West and China.

Sure to be a fascinating night - don't miss it!

When: Tuesday February 23 at 6pm

Where: Asia Bookroom, Lawry Place, Macquarie. ACT

Admission by gold coin donation. All money raised will go towards the excellent work done by NTA East Indonesia Aid

RSVP: By Monday February 22 to 62515191 or Email Us