


Daughters of the Bamboo Grove
Barbara Demick
21 €
Coup de coeur
(Asia, Aus & Oceania), by Chloe
I got so into this book I was reading whilst eating (which rarely happens)! I found it completely engrossing, moving and well written. It is the extraordinary story of separated twins, one seized by the Chinese authorities and adopted to America, the other growing up in China under the one-child policy. While working as a correspondent in Beijing, Barbara Demick uncovered the truth that many babies had been forcibly removed from their families and put up for international adoption. Meanwhile an American couple came to China thinking they were adopting one of the many abandoned baby girls, saving her from an orphanage but having no idea that she had actually been kidnapped by the state. Demick works to reunite the twins in this powerful book that questions the ethics of international adoption, the impact and consequences of the one-child policy and the narratives we have about the quality of lives lived in the East and West.
In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned. Their understanding had been that China's brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of abandoned girls, desperate for the care of adopted parents. What they didn't know - and what award-winning journalist Barbara Demick uncovered in 2007, while working as a correspondent in Beijing - was that their daughter had been snatched from her beloved family and her identical twin. Under China's one-child policy hundreds of poor Chinese were giving up their children due to soaring fines and threats of violence. More sinister still, international demand for adoptees was sky-rocketing, and local officials were forcibly seizing children and trafficking them to orphanages, who were selling them abroad. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove tells the gripping story of separated twins, their respective fates in China and the USA, and Barbara Demick's role in reuniting them against huge odds. Painting a rich portrait of China's history and culture, it asks questions about the roots, impact and consequences of China's one-child policy, the ethics of international adoption, and, ultimately, the assumptions and narratives we hold about the quality of lives lived in the East and the West.
Publisher: Granta Books
Binding: Paperback
Publication date: 05 Jun 2025
Dimensions: 232 x 152 x 29 mm
ISBN: 9781783787234