Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love

By Nicky Harman, published by Chatto & Windus in .

In the footsteps of Xinran's "Good Women of China", Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother is personal, immediate, full of harrowing, tragic detail but also uplifting, tender moments. 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...these 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.