Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

(An updated and detailed review is posted under the newer version/release of the same book on amazon) Like the other reviewers, I am also an adoptive parent of two girls. Unlike most other adoptive American parents, I am also a Chinese American and a child development psychologist, and I actually started working in Chinese orphanages to understand and improve care since our adoption. I do very much doubt the truthfulness some of the author's stories (mostly in chapter 5 and beyond). The ones that I do believe are true (the killing of female infants, for example), I wouldn't know how to begin to tell my own daughters. But just like the local television evening news that only shows crime, car accidents, fire, and animal abuse during the first 10 minutes of broadcast, a book focused solely on atrocities (and the most extreme at that!) may do a dis-service to China, its people, and most importantly, the girls we have adopted from there. Here's a litmus test. Does the book make you feel friendly towards China, Chinese people, or even some of the Chinese mothers/fathers/grandparents described in the book? (One of the well-to-do married mother in the book "apparently" abandoned her daughter to be adopted by American parents because she works too much at a high-level government job, her husband is too exhausted, and neither of them trust babysitters). Or does the book make you feel friendly towards the author, who comes off as the sole consistent heroine in every chapter - whether rushing to the aid of an orphan on the street (where many anonymous Chinese people simply stared), or rushing supplies to a broken-down orphanage, or taking in a migrant worker that nobody wanted, or unlocking the sad secrets buried for decades from broken women, who now runs a wonderful charitable foundation to continue her work? (The only other credible hero in the book is Red Mary, who got one chapter worth of mention.) If I read the book correctly, nearly all the stories are pre-2000, and most of the stories actually took place between 1970s to early 1990s). For readers and those adoptive parents interested in an update, here's what I have seen since then (note that the author claimed that she never stepped into an orphanage, even in the late 2000s, that was up to par). Like many other countries, China is evolving. In the orphanages I've been to (not as a visitor, but actually spend hours and days observing and studying care-giving and child development inside the rooms), things have improved a great deal. Throughout China, I have met dedicated parents, teachers, professionals, and government officials who worked against all odds for the abandoned children. Likewise, the flow of girls into orphanages are now mostly a thing of the past (sadly, the % of children with disabilities is at 90%+). Domestic adoption and foster care are growing, thanks for Chinese efforts and aid from abroad. Attitude towards girls have dramatically improved, along with the economic position and earning power of girls. (The flow of special needs children continues to be a major issue, and NGOs started by adoptive parents are helping to make a difference!) Even the orphanages have improved -- China has a higher level of care than most other countries. U.S. studies of adopted Chinese girls almost always found them to be healthier and better adjusted than children adopted from other countries. In all the travels of myself and my colleagues, we have seen over 100 orphanages. Only one or two fit the Dickensian description. Most are run by well-intentioned administrators and hardworking (low-paying) caregivers. Just last month, I interviewed three staff who 10 years ago slept in a farm house, all to one bed, with no shower or in-door plumbing, in order to start a foster care village which now houses over 200 children. They are government employees (people most often derided and vilified in the book). I've met former orphanage directors who rose through the ranks, and continued to work tirelessly for both international adoptions and domestic foster care/adoptions. I've met an orphanage director who started out as a special ed teacher in an orphanage, and just declined a promotion so that she could stay with the children's services. I read the entire book but cannot give this book to my girls, even after they grow up -- for the same reason that I turn off the television when news bombard us with the latest stories that bleed. Yes, my own girls' lives started on a street corner, but the world (even in China) isn't all dark and cruel. I think of the mother who might have fought to spare the girl's life, who probably waited in hiding until the child was found. The strangers who found her and called the police. The doctors who labored to keep her alive (due to prematurity). I know personally the caregiver who took my baby into her arms on day 1 and helped her grow up attached and well for two years. I may be wrong to focus just on the kindness of strangers. But no more wrong than a book that seems to go out of its way to find atrocity and has largely ignored the enormous positive movement spurred by the Chinese people and the adoptive families during the last 10 years. As a journalist semi-fictionalized expose of past atrocities, perhaps the book is suitable for a college course on gender and culture -- as a piece to tell my two girls about their life stories and their people and country, or even their birth mothers, it is not.