by XinranRandom House
~ Review in Halifax Herald, August 2010
Between 1966 and 1979, China’s population almost doubled in size to a staggering 1.2 billion people. Feeding this exploding population was an enormous challenge and, in an attempt to curb the escalating numbers, the “one family, one child” policy was instituted. The consequences of this legislation have been cataclysmic for girl babies within a culture where male babies were already valued more highly, and for their mothers, especially those born into poorer, village families. Tradition dictated that “ ... the first surviving child had to be a boy or their lives would be blighted and they would not go to heaven.”
Xinran’s new book, Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love,
documents the harshness of obedience and the heartache of mothers forced to give up their baby daughters, to orphanages if they were lucky or to death if they were not.
This collection of ten firsthand stories is hard to read and even harder to understand within the cultural context of a country struggling out of feudalism and catapulting into the 21st century.
Villagers were “... torn between the enlightened standards of modern civilization and the cruelty of ancient traditions, where human feelings could lose their way.”
Xinran began her career on a radio show in China, giving a voice to women. Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother focuses on the mothers who have lost their daughters. These babies may be lost from their mothers forever, adopted in the West, abandoned or even killed, but they are never forgotten. “Chinese women lived on the bottom rung of society, unquestioning obedience was expected of them and they had no means of building lives of their own.” But within the hearts of the mothers who bore them, these daughters are remembered and loved. These are the stories of the Chinese mothers who saved their girls when they could and the message they send to their lost children is clear - perhaps we could not keep you, but you are mourned and always loved.
Xinran is a journalist and author. In 1997, she emigrated from China to England with her son. She founded The Mothers’ Bridge of Love, a charity established to help disadvantaged Chinese children. This is her sixth book.
