China Ghosts: My Daughter's Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 272 pages
• Published by: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition June 24, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0061240303
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0061240300
• Book Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 7.2 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
As more Americans adopt Chinese children, the bookshelves fill with firsthand accounts of their experiences. Perhaps because many adoptions are preceded by infertility issues, most of these memoirs are written by women. So this, a father's account of going to China with his wife to adopt their first and second daughters, is particularly useful. Gammage, a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, had been happily married without children for many years, although he knew his wife really wanted children. By the time they discovered they couldn't have biological children, the best option was adopting from China. While there were tensions over their first daughter's medical problems (an infected scalp injury), both adoptions went reasonably smoothly. Back home, Gammage wrestled with his mixed feelings about the birth parents and his burden of good fortune, that guilty knowledge that his own happiness came from someone else's misfortune. Realizing that his own relationship to China was being shaped by the process of raising two Chinese girls, he ends this upbeat memoir by wondering about the impact of this new wave of immigrants on the future of Sino-American relations.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
In 1980, China's population and limited resources prompted the imposition of a one-child policy in an attempt to circumvent famine and improve its standard of living. This policy, along with a demand for sons, has prompted the rise of numerous orphanages whose inhabitants are predominantly female. What is a social problem for China is a boon for couples in the U.S. who are looking to adopt. In 2006, 6,493 children were adopted from China. Gammage, a journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, went to Changsha to adopt Jin Yu. His moving story of that adoption is an emotional account of a father's love for his daughter. Gammage writes, "Having a child enables you to imagine every child as your own." He finds it a revelation how much he loves her but is full of contradictory emotions regarding her origins: angry that she was abandoned as an infant and had to suffer her first two years in a Chinese orphanage, but grateful to China for granting him such a wonderful daughter. He views Chinese adoption as "a place where elation is paired with regret and hope stands as companion to sorrow." Segedin, Ben
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: China Ghosts: My Daughter's Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood (Hardcover) I devoured this book after someone on an adoption Yahoo Group recommended it and I heard the author on NPR. I have to say it's absolutely amazing. Jeff has extraordinary insight and he pulls no punches. He vividly describes both his incredible love for his daughter and his guilt and anger that she had to stay in an orphanage for 2 years before he could get her. He explores the contradiction between being eternally grateful to a country for allowing him to have his daughter, and being angry with the country whose policies forced his daughter to end up in an orphanage in the first place. This is an incredibly moving book and is impossible to put down. China Ghosts will leave you touched and inspired.