Books
Quotes are from the reviews at Amazon
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Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son
Kay Ann Johnson
"Kay Johnson has done groundbreaking research on abandonment and adoption in China. In Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son, Johnson untangles the complex interactions between these social practices and the government’s population policies. She also documents the many unintended consequences, including the overcrowding of orphanages that led China to begin international adoptions."
China's Hidden Children
Kay Ann Johnson
"In the thirty-five years since China instituted its One-Child Policy, 120,000 children—mostly girls—have left China through international adoption, including 85,000 to the United States. It’s generally assumed that this diaspora is the result of China’s approach to population control, but there is also the underlying belief that the majority of adoptees are daughters because the One-Child Policy often collides with the traditional preference for a son."
Cultures of Transnational Adoption
Toby Alice Volman ed.
"Adoptions from China to the United States soared from 115 in 1991 to 5,081 in 2000. By the end of the 1990s, China had become the leading "sending" country of children to the United States and the world, and more than 30,000 adopted Chinese children, mostly girls, were growing up with their (mostly) white parents in North America. In February 2002, bookstore windows in Manhattan displayed Valentine's Day specials, among them I Love You Like Crazy Cakes (Lewis 2000), a children's book about a single mother adopting a baby girl from China. The mainstreaming of Chinese adoption has occurred in part through the incessant media attention that has been lavished on adopted Chinese girls over the past decade. This interest shows no signs of abating, with a steady stream of articles in disparate venues."
How Chinese Are You?
Andrea Louie
"Chinese adoption is often viewed as creating new possibilities for the formation of multicultural, cosmopolitan families. For white adoptive families, it is an opportunity to learn more about China and Chinese culture, as many adoptive families today try to honor what they view as their children’s “birth culture.” However, transnational, transracial adoption also presents challenges to families who are trying to impart in their children cultural and racial identities that they themselves do not possess, while at the same time incorporating their own racial, ethnic, and religious identities. Many of their ideas are based on assumptions about how authentic Chinese and Chinese Americans practice Chinese culture."
Who Am I Now? Chinese Adoptees and Cultural Identity
Doryana X. Robins