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|title=Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love

|author=Xinran

|reviewer=Lesley Mason

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|pages=304

|publisher=Vintage

|date=February 2011

|isbn=978-0099535751

}}

Xinran first came to my notice with her 2002 book "The Good Women of China" which retold tales of the women she had come across through her work in Chinese radio, where for many years she had hosted the local equivalent of a cross between Woman's Hour and a late night phone-in talk show. She has been busy bringing us other stories in the meantime, but in this latest work she returns to those early days in radio and the stories she learned. Many of these stories she decided were too painful to tell. They speak of children, specifically daughters, abandoned by their Chinese mothers one way or another.

For a less harrowing take on modern China try Fucshia Dunlop’s [[Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop|food and travel odyssey]] or for Chinese history in fact & fiction try [[The Forbidden City by Geremie R Barme|The Forbidden City]], [[Blue China by Bamboo Hirst]] or [[Peony in Love by Lisa See]].

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