On a warm day in September 2000, a woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in China’s Hunan province. The twins were welcome additions to her family but also not her first children. Living under the shadow of China’s notorious one-child policy, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But two years later, the child was violently snatched away. The family worried they would never see her again, but they didn’t imagine she could be sent as far as the United States.
In her latest book, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove, Barbara Demick embarks on a journey that encompasses the origins, shocking cruelty, and long-term impact of China’s one-child rule; the rise of international adoption and the religious currents that buoyed it; and the exceedingly rare phenomenon of twin separation.
Barbara Demick is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and a contributor to The New Yorker. Her book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, was a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. She last joined us in 2020 for her book, Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town.
