by Evans, Karin
Do you work full-time? What is your schedule like?
I work at home. I’m a freelance writer. And for the past two years, I’ve also been in an MFA program in poetry. I’m juggling my projects with the kids’ schedules constantly. That means my workday is pretty broken up. I work at night a lot, and at other odd times. And I’ve learned a great secret to happiness is to do what I can, when I can, and let the rest go.
Did motherhood come pretty easily to you?
Yes and no. Kelly was pretty easy. When I first got her, we just fell into each other’s arms. After a couple of days, I thought, “What did I ever do without her?” We were joined at the hip. We just kind of worked out the details. I talked to lots of other mothers.
With my second daughter, who was three years old when we adopted her, I was far more conscious of the gap we had to bridge, and we had to feel our way through lots of grief and anger, as well as cherishing the joyful moments. The transition can be so much harder for an older child. It took a lot more conscious work, and still does. I’ll always have more to learn!
Are you working on another book?
I always have a couple projects going, but right now I have to complete my graduate thesis—on Chinese poetry—and finish a creative manuscript so I can earn my graduate degree. After that, I’d like to tackle another book.
When do you plan on showing Kelly and Franny The Lost Daughters of China?
Kelly’s grown up knowing that I wrote a book and that it’s largely about her. She’s read portions, and over time we’ll read more of it together. Early on, she used to come to some of the book signings I was asked to do. People would ask her if she was the little girl in my book. Kelly would say, “Yep. That’s my mom, she’s writing in books and giving them away.” As I have been revising the book, I have talked a lot to both girls about their experiences and thoughts on the subject.
Do you plan to show Kelly the actual letters you wrote to her while you were waiting to adopt her?
Yes, though most of the sentiments and questions in them are included in the book. For both Kelly and Franny there is a bunch of stuff I’ve been keeping—clothes they came home in, notes from various people, all their paperwork, souvenirs from China, and so forth. Anything that’s a piece of their past.
Do you consciously try to incorporate Chinese culture into your day-to-day lives? Do you think your daughters will feel a connection to China and Chinese culture when they grow up?
Yes, we all enjoy a lot of Chinese music, art, literature, festivals, whatever is available. It’s important to feel connected to the Chinese American community, I think. The girls love to go to
San Francisco’s Chinatown, and often on Sundays we go to Chinatown in Oakland for dim sum with friends. We have a number of friends who are Chinese American.
Whether my children will continue to feel the connection to China, I don’t know. But the way we live, I know that the girls will at least have knowledge of China and the experience of going back and forth on trips. For six years I was on the board of Half the Sky Foundation, and we went to China in connection with that. It’s given the girls an inside look that they might otherwise not have had.
My goal is to give the girls as much facility and knowledge and confidence as possible so they can make their own decisions about connections and identity. It would be wonderful if they felt a bit like world citizens, with a level of comfort in both America and China. We’ll see.
Do you and your husband ever think about adopting another Chinese girl?
Realistically, no. But all it takes is walking into an orphanage and seeing the children. During one visit to China, I met this little twelve-year-old in an orphanage. She was a beautiful kid who couldn’t walk. She was someone I knew I could open my heart and arms to. We have sponsored children like her, as well as infants, through Half the Sky.
More Food for Thought
Ten Questions to Ask Yourself (and Your Book Club Friends) About The Lost Daughters of China
1. Before you read this book, were you aware of the phenomenon of Americans adopting Chinese girls? What were your feelings and attitudes about it? Do you know any Americans who have adopted Chinese girls?
2. If you are the adoptive parent of a Chinese daughter (or daughters): How did Evans’s book make you feel? Which of her anecdotes and insights resonated most for you? Did you find yourself strongly agreeing or disagreeing with anything she wrote?
3. If you are thinking about adopting a Chinese daughter: How did Evans’s book make you feel? Do you feel more knowledgeable about what the future may hold for you and your family? Did anything in the book surprise you?
4. If you are the adoptive parent of a non-Chinese child: Did you find many points of similarity in your adoption experiences and Evans’s adoption experiences?
5. What were your attitudes about China or Chinese culture before you read this book? Did your attitudes change at all after reading this book?
6. Discrimination against girls and women exists in many different countries and cultures. But the extreme favoritism of the Chinese toward boys—combined with the Chinese government’s one-child policy and other factors—has resulted in a disturbing epidemic of “lost daughters,” as well as orphanages overcrowded with girls. Is there anything the U.S. government can do to intervene in this situation? Or should America respect the laws, attitudes, and customs of the Chinese people, and leave the Chinese government to sort out its own problems?
7. Americans are adopting Chinese and other foreign-born children in increasing numbers. There are also more and more mixed-race families in the United States. How do these new types of families challenge your notions, if any, about the “traditional nuclear family”? When you see a light-skinned Caucasian woman strolling with a brown-skinned baby, for example, do you find yourself doing a double take or saying to yourself “I wonder if she’s that baby’s mother”?
8. In her book, Evans quotes the writer and family therapist Claire S. Chow on the subject of cross-cultural adoption: “Parents should realize that they aren’t adopting just a child but an ethnically different child. Adoption itself carries a primal kind of loss. Add the loss of original country and culture, and you can see the magnitude of the problem.” Do you agree with this statement? In what ways might an adopted Chinese girl have problems with self-identity and cultural identity, self-acceptance and social acceptance, as she grows up in the United States? Do you think a Caucasian orphan would have the same problems?
9. Some American couples who adopt Chinese girls choose to raise them with full knowledge about their Chinese backgrounds and attempt to give them a bicultural upbringing. Other couples choose to raise them with a “clean slate,” with little or no acknowledgment of their Chinese heritage or past. Do you think one way is “better” than the other? Do you think this question applies to other types of international adoption as well?
10. Evans’s book was born out of a series of letters she wrote to her daughter while she and her husband were waiting for her adoption to go through. The letters were very personal, and yet, in turning them into a book Evans created a work that was helpful and relevant to a wider audience. Do you have a similar collection of letters—to your children, to your mate or lover, to yourself, or to other important people in your life? Are there aspects of these letters that would be helpful or relevant to a wider audience?
Acknowledgments
Many people helped me with this book, beginning with my beloved and stalwart husband, Mark, and my extraordinary daughters, Kelly and Franny, who have graced my life more than I can say. Numerous friends helped also, by listening, advising, and listening some more: Frances Lana, Mary Adrian, Jeany Duncan, Kathy Page, Claire Ulam Weiner, Jodi Hoffman, Lucy Jelinek-Hays, Barbara Lane, Teo Furtado, Jozie Rabyor. Daryl Ryan led the way by showing, always, that all things are possible. Jerry Buchen built me the best writing retreat ever. My late father, Calvin (Kelly) Evans, showed me how loving and deep the ties of adoption could be. My late mother
, Louise Evans, provided much help. My siblings, Gregory Evans, Douglas Evans, and Janet Evans Grunenwald, and their families, deserve thanks for showing me all along how good a family can be. My parents-in-law, Keith and Jo Humbert, were wonderful babysitters and cheerleaders, Keith Humbert helped, too, with research. My writing partners Cynthia Kear, Jane Meredith Adams, and Wendy Lichtman offered wise support, as did my agent, Barbara Moulton, and Tarcher’s fine and thoughtful editor Sara Carder.
Any number of people who know far more about China and Chinese culture than I can ever hope to provided invaluable background: Ronald Takaki, Richard Effland, Jeanette Chu, Kay Ann Johnson, Zhang Zhirong, Susan Greenhalgh, Hong Ying, Amy Tan, Yvonne Rand, Belle Yang, Chen Mu Xian, Becky Guo, Stephen J. Roddy, Harry Wu, May Wong, Mary Hipp, Father Tom Wilcox, Sydney Liu, Chow Hai Lee, Vivian Chiang, Shirley Fong-Torres, Nona Mock Wyman, Min Sun Yee. China scholar Eileen Otis contributed valuable insights. Joyce McGuire Pavao, Val Free, Linda Grillo, Amanda Baden, and Claire S. Chow offered thoughtful observations on cross-cultural adoption.
Thanks, too, to all the members of our extended support group of families who have adopted from China, especially Jenny and Richard Bowen, Vic Schrader and Jill Touloukian, Peggy Scott, Lura Dolas and Darryl Brock, Hanni and Alan Lee, and their daughters. Also: Patti Blumen, Michelle Green, Glenn and Linda Komatsu, Steve and Stephanie Chan, Mark Brown and Susan August-Brown, Kerry and Pauline Carlson, John and Naomi Cornwall, Jane Emmer and Sue Fink, Susan Lewis and Bob Taylor, Howard and Sharon Ogamori, Teri Tompkins and Lori Dick, Jim Wirt and Marty Foltyn, Steve and Amy Wolla, Susan Lakari and Ted Reiner, Steve Seeger and Victoria Ellison, Carole Sopp, Patricia Ng. My gratitude to Fang Fang Lee, Ana Tanner, Rebecca Hurdis, and Hollee McGinnis for generously sharing their experience. To foreign members of the adoption community for their support: Valerie Kaye in London, Jaume Josa in Spain, and Nicole Michaud in Montreal, who translated portions of this book into French. To adoptive parents Scott Novitsky and Linda Wells for their examples of courage and unwavering love. Our profound thanks to Betty Louie and Colette Fujimoto for sharing their family with us.
To Anchee Min for caring and telling the truth, my heartfelt thanks. I am also grateful to poet Penny Callan Partridge, and to poets Jia Jia, Luo Xioge, and Li Xiaoyu for their eloquent words, and to Julia Lin for introducing me to their work. To Greg Wolfe, Paul Mariani, Pete Fairchild, and Jeanne Murray Walker, my mentors at Seattle Pacific University, and to all my fellow MFA students for exceptional help with the writing craft. Any errors or lapses in judgment are, of course, my own.
Finally, my deepest thanks to Yo-Yo Ma for his recordings of the unaccompanied cello suites by Bach—my writing music.
Notes
Introduction 1 Numbers of Chinese children adopted by American citizens are based on U.S. Immigration and Naturalization visas issued. Of children adopted internationally by U.S. families in 2007, the largest number came from China—5,453 (down from 6,493 the previous year), followed by Guatemala with 4,728 and Russia with 2,310.
2 Betty Jean Lifton, Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1988).
I. Journey to the East 1 Li Xiaoyu, “The Silk Dream,” Women of the Red Plain: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Women’s Poetry, trans. Julia C. Lin (New York: Penguin, 1992).
2 For text of the early adoption laws, see Laura A. Cecere’s The Children Can’t Wait: China’s Emerging Model for Intercountry Adoption. China Seas, P.O. Box 391197, Cambridge, MA 02139. Copyright © Laura A. Cecere.
3 Ibid.
4 Jane Gross, “The Fight for Infertility Coverage,” New York Times, December 7, 1998.
5 From the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.
6 Lisa Belkin, “Getting the Girl,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, July 25, 1999.
7 “In Search of a Child” (series on adoption), New York Times, October 25, 1998.
8 “Chinese Orphanages: A Followup,” published by Human Rights Watch/ Asia, March 1996.
9 Our Chinese Daughters Foundation, Inc., 509 South Moore Street, Bloomington, IL 61701.
10 The Dying Rooms aired in the United States on January 24, 1996, on Cinemax; a portion aired subsequently on the CBS show Eye to Eye.
11 An account appears in the Book of Songs, the earliest anthology of poetry in China.
12 Translations from the Chinese, trans. Arthur Waley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941).
13 This Chinese version of “The Tortoise and the Hare,” “A Lame Turtle’s Conquest,” comes from Zhang Ciyun, The Chinese Idioms and Their Stories (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1996).
14 J. T. Condon, “Psychological Disability in Women Who Relinquish a Baby for Adoption,” Medical Journal of Australia, February 3, 1986.
15 Name and other identifying details have been changed for this person as well as others involved in the China logistics.
2. From China with Love 1 Harry Wu, Bitter Winds (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995).
2 Pollution report from the New York Times, September 19, 1997.
3 Matt Forney, “Chinese Leader’s Son Builds an Empire—In the Phone Business,” Wall Street Journal, November 1, 1999.
4 Annie Dillard, Encounters with Chinese Writers (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1984).
5 Zhou Kaiya and Zhang Xingduan, Baiji, The Yangtze River Dolphin and Other Endangered Animals of China (Washington, D.C.: Stone Wall Press, 1991). Also “Demise of a Fabled River Runner,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 22, 1998.
6 Orville Schell, Mandate of Heaven (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
7 Janice E. Stockard, Daughters of the Canton Delta, Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860-1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989).
8 Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Women’s Suicides Reveal Rural China’s Bitter Roots—Nation Starts to Confront World’s Highest Rate,” New York Times, January 24, 1999.
3. Down the River 1 Luo Xiaoge, “Drizzling Rain,” in Women of the Red Plain: An Anthology of Chinese Women’s Poetry, trans. Julia C. Lin (New York: Penguin, 1992).
2 From “Notice to Prospective Adoption Parents,” issued by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. M-349 (05-09-91).
3 From “Report on Implementation of CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) in the People’s Republic of China,” published by Human Rights in China, December 1998.
4 Appeared in a fund-raising appeal published by Human Life International.
5 Quoted by Kay Johnson and subsequently in publications put out by Families with Children from China.
6 The Book of Odes, or Songs, is the oldest known collection of Chinese poetry, dating to 600 B.C. in the Chou dynasty, and is believed to have been compiled by Confucius. This English version is by Karin Evans.
7 Tsai Chin Chung, Confucius Speaks: Words to Live By (New York: Anchor Books, 1996).
8 Jia Jia, “Women of the Red Plain,” Women of the Red Plain: An Anthology of Chinese Women’s Poetry, trans. Julia C. Lin (New York: Penguin, 1992).
9 London Telegraph, April 11, 1997. Originally reported in Theory and Time (Shenyang, China).
10 Anne Behnke Kinney, ed., Chinese Views of Childhood (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995).
11 Stockard, Daughters of the Canton Delta.
12 Hu Shih, “Women’s Place in Chinese History,” in Chinese Women Through Chinese Eyes (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1992).
13 Ibid.
14 Robert Wyndham, ed., Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes (New York: Philomel, 1968).
4. The One-Child, Maybe-One-More Policy 1 Used first in Anhui province, later in Shaanxi, according to Susan Greenhalgh in “Evolution of the One-Child Policy in Shaanxi,” China Quarterly, June 1990.
2 Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine (New York: Free Press, 1997).
3 Alphonse L. McDonald, book review of Hungry Ghosts, Population and Development Review, October 23, 1998.
4 Professor Ma
Yinchu, for instance, was subjected to “mass condemnation” after he published an essay warning of a looming population crisis, “The Relation Between the Population and the Productivity in Our Country,” in Daogong Bao, May 9, 1957. At the same time that Thomas Malthus influenced Western thinking with his warnings about population outpacing resources, a similar theory was advanced by a Chinese scholar, Hong Liangji. For an in-depth discussion of China’s population challenges, see chapter 24, “Levels of Power,” in Jonathan D. Spence’s The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).
5 Inception of the policy is generally dated to September 1980, when China’s Communist Party Central Committee issued an open letter calling for radical curtailment of population growth by limiting most couples to one child. The 1980 Marriage Law and 1982 Constitution underscored the approach as “basic national policy.” From “Caught Between Tradition and the State,” published by Human Rights in China. (HRIC is the largest independent organization focused on monitoring and promoting human rights in the People’s Republic of China.) Materials cited are available on their website: www.hrichina.org.eap.
6 Early reports of coercive measures appeared in Steven W. Mosher’s Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese (New York: Free Press, 1983), as well as subsequently in documents published by Human Rights in China, including “Caught Between Tradition and the State,” released in 1995. Also reported by John Aird in Slaughter of the Innocents: Coercive Birth Control in China (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1990).
