Yet there was no disguising the truth: I was another in an endless string of losing lottery tickets. I don’t think Ma held me in her arms. I know she never fed me a drop of her milk. For her and Ba, my birth was not joyful but rather a source of disillusionment and sorrow, one of many open wounds that would ache for decades. Fortunately for me, my birth was the break my American parents had longed for, a turning point.
Now that I have my own daughter, I ask myself, Could I have given her up?
Sofia was born on September 7, 2007. After a dozen sets of pushes, she burst into our world, and my obstetrician lifted her triumphantly. Skinny limbs dangled from her sleek, grayish purple body like spaghetti. Once the doctor cut the umbilical cord, she let loose a desperate wail. A nurse put her shuddering body on my chest, and I wept. After a few seconds, they whisked her away, and the nurses, followed by my husband, went to clean and weigh her in another room. The midwife returned to the delivery room to report that Sofia had a head full of hair, my Asian eyes, and my husband’s detached earlobes. I couldn’t wait to get to our hospital room so I could inspect our baby for myself, to hold, feed, and take care of her.
What if a fleeting minute with my daughter had been all I was allowed? I gaze at my chubby girl now, charmed to pieces by her gummy grin, and I can’t imagine that someone else could or would take better care of her. Could I have given up my child to strangers in a far-off country with only the vague promise of a better life? Before I had my own child, I think it was easy for me to shrug off Ba and Ma’s sacrifice as simply for the best because that’s the way things turned out. Now I see how difficult that decision must have been for them.
I also can’t fathom how Ma didn’t do anything to save her son so long ago. My own baby’s hunger cry is heartbreaking; I hear it and go running, unlatching my nursing bra in midstride. I realize that Ma was young, scared, and trapped in a mind-set that seemed insurmountable. But she should have risen up—for the sake of her child. I have to stop myself from judging her failure with scorn or even disgust. I try to follow my siblings’ example and accept Ma as she is. It does me no good to dwell on the rights and wrongs of my birth parents; I could get stuck in that pit and keep sinking. So I make a choice to forgive and move on.
Lately, I have less time to keep in touch with my Chinese relatives, and vice versa. Occasionally, my sisters and I send each other pictures of our kids or exchange a few e-mail or instant messages. Our contact is minimal, though it’s not much less than I talk to my brothers in Michigan. I did have pangs during my pregnancy, when I wished that I could ask Ma about how her body behaved when we were in her belly (one of few parenthood-related subjects that my mom couldn’t help me with). Did Ma get stretch marks? How much weight did she gain? But making that call was too daunting: figuring when she and someone who could translate might be home, fumbling through the conversation, and confronting again our lack of a relationship. Instead, I quizzed my sisters on their pregnancies. A few months after Sofia was born, Ma and I spoke for the first time in a year and a half. She was visiting Taipei, and my brother-in-law asked me to hook up a Web camera to my computer in Argentina so that Ma could see her newest grandchild. We waved while my birth mother cooed, “Hao keai.” How cute. One day we will return to Taiwan. I think it will feel good to see Ma hug my child for the first time. Maybe Sofia will learn some Mandarin so she can play with her cousins and mind her aunties. Ba might even hold Sofia, although I know I will wish that it was my dad instead.
I always tell people that I found my birth family by accident, that one sentence written in a Christmas card set off a chain of events that I still find mind-blowing. Most days, I’m glad I asked the questions that most adopted children never get the chance to ask. Most days, I like the eccentricity and complexity of my past.
Now I offer my voice to the chorus of ancestors. I am not the son who can perpetuate the family name, but I can tell our story. I am not the heir that Ba wanted, but I, too, can be a keeper of our history. I choose to continue the narrative in my own way, using what I’ve learned to build our family. One day my husband and I hope to adopt. Giving our children even a fraction of the love and generosity that my mom and dad shared is the best legacy that I can think of leaving. Mostly, though, I’ve just really enjoyed parenthood and watching Sofia grow.
As I write this, my daughter is exactly seven months and three weeks old, the same age I was when I left Taiwan. She is a couple centimeters longer and weighs a pound less but has the same impressive quantity of brown hair that I had, if a few shades lighter. I watch for signs of everyone in her. I hope she will get my dad’s compassion, my mom’s athleticism, and my husband’s good humor. I already sense that she has inherited my Chinese family’s love for eating. To me, Sofia looks more like Monte, but I am amazed at how intimately the rhythms of mother and child are intertwined. I make funny faces, Sofia giggles. When she is sick, I catch her cold. If she is sleepless, so am I. I am keenly aware that what I do now will help build the foundation of who she will become. So we eat vegetables and play and dance. I speak to her in English, Spanish, and even throw in a few words of Mandarin. We read together almost every day. I sit in bed with Sofia balancing in my lap, surrounded by fantastic tales of hippos, bears, and dinosaurs. Then I open a book and let her turn the page.
Lucky Girl
Questions for Discussion
Questions for Discussion
1. Although Mei-Ling Hopgood always knew she was adopted, she never thought of her birth parents and almost resented it when people assumed she should. Do you think the search for one’s birth parents is necessary?
2. Did this book change your feelings about open vs. closed adoptions? Should birth parents have the right to find the child they gave up?
3. How would you characterize and contrast Hopgood’s relationships with her Chinese father and her American father? Are there any similarities? How about her relationships with her mothers?
4. Hopgood was surprised to discover how easy it was to relate to her birth sisters and how much she wanted to get to know them. “I felt as if I was being passionately recruited for an exclusive, mysterious sorority, and I was eager to be inducted officially into the club” (page 85). What influences sibling relations in adulthood?
5. How do you think things would have been different if Hopgood had been reunited with her birth family at an earlier age? As a child? As a teenager?
6. How does Hopgood’s personality and her experience as a journalist inform her approach to getting to know her birth family?
7. Hopgood actively tries to uncover the truth behind her adoption and her history. Do you think she had a right to pursue her own history? How about her parents’ history? How much do children really need to know about their parents’ pasts? Was the knowledge gained worth the painful revelations that emerged, or would it have been best to leave some stones unturned?
8. In chapter 12, “Handmade Dumplings,” Hopgood discusses her coming to terms with her Chinese ancestry in college. She says she realized that “all Asians, in fact, do not look alike” (page 158). When, if ever, have you had to confront and challenge your own stereotypes?
9. Hopgood learns to make her mother’s dumplings. What’s your favorite family recipe?
10. Why do you think Ma stayed with Ba, despite his treatment of her and the urging of her daughters? Do you think she had choices? How much can be blamed on her upbringing and culture? How much would you attribute to her personal demons?
11. Which do you think is the more “lucky” gender in this story? Why? In modern Western society, do boys or girls have it better?
12. Through the lives of her siblings, Hopgood is able to see how her destiny might have turned out. Can you identify any moments in your life or that of your parents when your family history could have taken a completely different turn?
13. This book has many mothers—Chris Hopgood, Ma, Mei-Ling’s sister, Mei-Ling, and even Sister Maureen, in a way. Which mother do you relate to the most?
<
br /> 14. Was the language barrier the only reason that Hopgood did not really get to know and understand Ma?
15. Forgiveness is a major theme of Lucky Girl. Do you think Hopgood can ever forgive her birth mother? Why or why not? Do you think the birth of Hopgood’s own child makes this easier? Harder?
16. If you could meet any person in the book, who would it be, and why?
ERIC EASON
Mei-Ling Hopgood is an award-winning journalist who has written for the Detroit Free Press, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, National Geographic Traveler, and the Miami Herald and has worked in the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau. She lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with her husband and daughter.
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2009 by Mei-Ling Hopgood. All rights reserved. First Algonquin paperback edition, Spring 2010. Originally published by Algonquin Books in 2009.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-012-1
Other Recommended Memoirs from Algonquin Paperbacks
The Jew Store: A Family Memoir, by Stella Suberman
A spirited memoir about the first Jewish family to live in the small town of Concordia, Tennessee, in the 1920s—a story that speaks to the immigrant experience of millions of Americans.
“Well-stocked with affection … Beautifully portrays the complex web of interconnections and disconnections between blacks and whites, Jews and gentiles, Southerners and Northerners, rural farmers and big city sophisticates.” —The Dallas Morning News
AN ALGONQUIN READERS ROUND TABLE EDITION WITH READING GROUP GUIDE AND OTHER SPECIAL FEATURES • ISBN 978-1-56512-330-4
Heart in the Right Place, by Carolyn Jourdan
When a fast-tracked Capitol Hill attorney volunteers to help her father, a rural doctor, in his clinic in the Tennessee mountains, she discovers that some of our greatest heroes may be those living right beside us.
“A beautiful memoir … Making a difference can be as simple as getting up in the morning and helping those around you.” —Family Circle
“An absolute delight of a book: warm, funny and written with great heart and understanding.” —BookPage
AN ALGONQUIN READERS ROUND TABLE EDITION WITH READING GROUP GUIDE AND OTHER SPECIAL FEATURES • ISBN 978-1-56512-613-8
My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Family’s Past, by Ariel Sabar
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, this sweeping saga of Middle-Eastern history is also an intimate story of tolerance and hope as it follows a son’s epic journey back to his father’s lost homeland.
“A powerful story of the meaning of family and tradition inside a little-known culture.” —San Francisco Chronicle
AN ALGONQUIN READERS ROUND TABLE EDITION WITH READING GROUP GUIDE AND OTHER SPECIAL FEATURES • ISBN 978-1-56512-933-7
Praise for Lucky Girl
“An award-winning writer recounts her experience as one of the first Chinese babies adopted in the West and her surprising trail back to the rural Taiwanese family who gave her away … A great book.” —Good Housekeeping
“Hopgood is a likable narrator whose life embodies a fascinating Sliding Doors–type what-if scenario … She deftly and movingly contrasts her own childhood with doting parents in a Michigan suburb to the very different lives of her sisters.” —Elle
“Hopgood, a journalist who grew up outside Detroit, is by turns wry and insightful about the many twists her search for identity took once she encountered her birth family. Lucky Girl is wonderfully readable … [It] offers a peek into what it’s like to negotiate across such boundaries, and why birth cultures can’t be reduced to stereotypes.” —Women’s Review of Books
“Lucky Girl is a vibrant take on the adoptee’s emotional roller-coaster, from conversations with birth family to bonding with her sisters, from her Chinese father’s obsession with having a son to the birth of her own daughter. It’s a riveting ride for readers, too.” —Adoptive Families
“Lucky Girl offers an enchanting glimpse into Hopgood’s reunion with her Taiwanese family … Hopgood’s story entices not because it’s joyful but because she is honest, analytical and articulate concerning her ambivalence about and eventual acceptance of both her families and herself.” —The Louisville Courier-Journal
“With concise, truth-seeking deftness of a seasoned journalist, Mei-Ling delves into the political, cultural and financial reasoning behind her Chinese birth parents’ decision to put her up for adoption … Cut with historical detail and touching accounts of Mei-Ling’s ‘real’ family, the Hopgoods, Lucky Girl is a refreshingly upbeat take on dealing with the pressures and expectations of family, while remaining true to oneself. Simple, to the point and uncluttered of the everyday minutiae, Mei-Ling Hopgood nails the concept of becoming one’s own.” —Detroit Metro Times
“Hopgood pushes herself to ask tough questions. As she does, shocking family secrets begin to spill forth … Brutally honest … Although Hopgood’s memoir is uniquely her own, multiple perspectives on adoption saturate her book.” —Bust magazine
“Mei-Ling superbly contrasts her comfortable, American suburban life with the alternate universe of her Chinese birth family. Along an often emotionally harrowing journey, Mei-Ling struggles against cultural and language divides to discover a murky, often disturbing family history stemming from her birth father’s obsession for a son. The result is a compelling, honest, and very human tale about self-identity and the complex concept of family.” —Kathleen Flinn, author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry
“There are secrets and an ocean’s worth of anger. But Hopgood … play[s] out the complex tenderness that springs from expanding your definition of what constitutes a family.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Hopgood has it all: a journalist’s brain, a camerawoman’s eye, and a storyteller’s heart. In Lucky Girl, she beautifully weaves the tricky helix of hope and heredity, showing us that fractured families are sometimes the most whole. On every page, Hopgood’s unflinching honesty, emotional acuity, and narrative grace grounds this intimate story of family ties tattered, torn, and, in unexpected ways, restored.” —Kelly McMasters, author of Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town
“A fascinating memoir.” —The Columbus Dispatch
“Those unfamiliar with adoption stories will find Hopgood’s memoir to be eye-opening. Those a little more acquainted with the issues broached in the novel will find Hopgood’s writing to be genuine and clear.” —Honolulu Weekly
“Lucky Girl is a superior book because Hopgood is fair-minded, realistic and uninterested in making big pronouncements about adoption.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“[Mei-Ling Hopgood] writes with humor and grace about her efforts to understand how biology, chance, choice and love intersect to delineate a life. A wise, moving meditation on the meaning of family, identity and fate.” —Kirkus Reviews
“As a journalist, Hopgood uses her skill to tell an unflinching, honest tale of [the] two worlds in which she still lives.” —Rocky Mount Telegram
“[An] absorbing narrative … She tells her story with sensitivity, honesty, humor, intelligence and maturity beyond her years. At times, her memoir reads as a travelogue, at others a study in social history, but always it lifts the heart.” —The Southern Pines Pilot
“A fascinating account … This beautifully written memoir, with its dark secrets and redeeming moments, certainly qualifies as a universal story about family.” —Dayton Daily News
“Mei-Ling Hopgood’s riveting memoir traces a young woman’s journey to understand the forces that shaped her life. Heartwarming and addictive, Lucky Girl captures the beauty—and the luck—of finding
home.” —Danielle Trussoni, author of Falling Through the Earth
“Refreshingly resistant to the ‘primal wound’ theories of old, Mei-Ling Hopgood navigates the parallel terrains of her identity not out of a need to heal or fill a void, but driven by a journalist’s quest for the truth. She withstands the pressure and confusion of multiple loyalties, connections, and destinies with humor, sensitivity, and great candor, and in exploring her two worlds, comes to understand them both, and herself, more fully.” —Sarah Saffian, author of Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found
“Lucky Girl is an uplifting and beautiful journey that will bring out all your emotions.” —Michelle Yu, author of China Dolls
Lucky Girl Page 23
