News & Notes

  • NEW BOOK BY AMERICAN MOM ABOUT RAISING HER CHINESE DAUGHTERS IN CHINA

    When single mother Patti Waldmeir decides to raise her two adopted Chinese daughters close to their culture, the whole family embarks on the adventure of a lifetime. They move to Shanghai when Lucy and Grace are seven and eight and stay until they are in high school.

    Waldmeir, an award-winning author and foreign correspondent, interrogates everyone from orphanage officials to masseurs, from trash pickers to child brides, to uncover the human story of why so many Chinese girls were sent overseas for adoption.

    She makes an astounding discovery in a Chinese alleyway, and takes her girls deep into the streets of Shanghai and the vast countryside of China, to explore what it means to be Chinese—and American at the same time.

    Funny, heartwarming, gut-wrenching, and raw, this book examines important questions about identity, race and culture—through the prism of one extraordinary family’s entertaining adventures in China.

    (Read the first chapter for free here. An excerpt recently published by the Financial Times is here.)

    Editorial Reviews

    “Waldmeir is a truly amazing wordsmith, and her book is the most ‘real’ about adoption, and about the amazing journey we adoptive parents go on, which I have had the privilege to read (and I have read them all I think!)” –Carma Elliot, CMG OBE, former UK Consul General Shanghai

    “In her well meaning attempt to provide her adopted Chinese daughters with “a profound and deep, warts-and-all knowledge of their homeland,” Waldmeir has written a witty, hilarious, soul-searching, and heartfelt account, a riveting exploration of what it means to be born on one continent and to grow up on another.” –Karin Evans, author of “The Lost Daughters of China”

    “A heartwarming memoir that every adoptive family should read. Patti Waldmeir’s attempts to raise her American-raised, China-born daughters in Shanghai is a cross-cultural romp that raises some very important questions–what it means to be a parent? what it means to be born into one race, and raised by another?” –Mei Fong, author of “One Child: Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment.”

    “Patti Waldmeir is one of the great foreign correspondents of our times. In this book, she turns the lens on herself to tell the saga of highly-accomplished, never-married, middle-aged white woman who crossed an ocean to create a family. It’s a story of abandonment, adoption, identity, race and culture– and how these concepts and boundaries have a way of going blurry in the modern world.” –Paul Taylor, former executive vice president, Pew Research Center

    About the Author

    Patti Waldmeir is an award-winning author and journalist. She has spent nearly forty years working as a reporter and columnist for the Financial Times, reporting from Ghana; Zambia; Nigeria; London; South Africa; Washington, DC; Shanghai; and now Chicago. Raised in Detroit, Waldmeir graduated with honors from the University of Michigan and went on to win a Marshall Scholarship to earn her master’s degree at Cambridge University.

    Waldmeir’s previous award-winning book, Anatomy of a Miracle: The End of Apartheid and the Birth of a New South Africa, chronicled the peace deal between white and black in South Africa and the rise of Nelson Mandela. Her latest focuses on a more personal issue. When Waldmeir adopted two Chinese daughters, she decided to move the family to Shanghai to help them keep close to their Chinese heritage. Chinese Lessons is a story of identity, race and culture, told through the prism of family.

  • Are there different standards for admitting different racial groups in colleges and universities? They calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African-Americans who got 1100. Whites were three times, Hispanics six times, and blacks more than 15 times as likely to be accepted at a US university as Asian-Americans.
  • Beautiful and even amazing photos from all around China.
  • The Missing Girls of China: Population, Policy, Culture, Abortion, Abandonment and Adoption in East Asian Perspective by David M. Smolin.
  • A growing number of Asian adoptees are choosing to adopt children from their birth countries as a way to reclaim their culture
  • PBS’ POV has featured three films about adoption (they are available online as well) and launched a national public awareness campaign to examine issues facing adoptees and families who choose to adopt.
    Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy by Stephanie Wang-Breal; Off and Running by Nicole Opper; In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee by Deann Borshay Liem
  • “Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other,” by Scott Simon on NPR.
  • “Realistic Expectations:The First Year Home“
    This 50 page guide offers information on a variety of subjects for adoptive families as they put away their travel suitcases, pre-concieved notions, and get down to the job of parenting…Free from EMK Press.
  • “Culture isn’t Chicken, Tacos or Spring Rolls“
    Often when the topic of culture comes up in a transracial conversation, it is mentioned that pictures of people from the adoptees race are displayed and race conscious toys and books are bought and food from their culture are prepared or presented as ways of keeping the child in touch with their culture. Click here for the article.
  • “What No One Ever Told Me About Special Needs Adoption: Loving Our Perfect Child“
  • “An Adoption, Six Months Later“
  • “Trafficking Reports Raise Heart-wrenching Questions for Adoptive Parents“
  • Baby Back Home Bao Bei Hu Jia (Chinese Site)
    ” It was set up to help parents in China find abducted kids but several adoptive families have already contacted them asking for help in locating birthparents.”
  • “Adopted From Korea and in Search of Identity“
    As a child, Kim Eun Mi Young hated being different. Growing up, she says, “at no time did I consider myself anything other than white.” When her father brought home toys, a record and a picture book on South Korea, the country from which she was adopted in 1961, she ignored them. Article from the New York Times.
  • Frances Wang had presented the story at Mam Non’s Moon Festival.   She also writes a column for AnnArbor.com.
  • My Sister’s Adoption Essay – from The Transracial Korean Adoption Nexus

Please note: content on these pages is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as a recommendation of any particular organization or company, nor as legal or medical advice.

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