One of the world's best investigative journalists tells the true story of Chinese twins forcibly separated as babies through adoption trafficking, raised on opposite sides of the globe and only reunited as teens.
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.
PRAISE-
'Lucid and poignant...beautifully written.' Literary Review on Eat the Buddha
'A superb storyteller, Demick melds the personal, the historical and the political seamlessly.' New Internationalist on Eat the Buddha
'A vivid, exhaustively researched, and ground-level view of the impact of history on people's lives... Compelling.' New Statesman on Eat the Buddha
About the Author
Barbara Demick won the Samuel Johnson Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award with for Nothing to Envy, her seminal book on North Korea. Besieged, her account of the war in Sarajevo, was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize. Demick's Eat the Buddha- Life and Death in a Tibetan Town was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times. Her books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Demick is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. She lives in New York.
Industry Reviews
‘Demick turns the seemingly-prosaic human dramas of our societies into a cinematic and heart-rending epic tale with consequences that cross continents. In her work, every individual’s story gets their due—its beauty, dignity, and wonder made evident through her writing.’ - Emily Feng, author of Let Only Red Flowers Bloom
‘This immensely empathetic, moving, and thought-provoking narrative offers readers an extraordinary window into the complex dilemmas of international adoption.’ - Zhuqing Li, author of Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden
‘A bittersweet but engrossing narrative of how one family was compelled by Beijing’s “one-child policy” to give an “unauthorised” child up for adoption to American parents.’ - Orville Schell, co-author of Wealth and Power
