Throwaway Daughter by Ting-xing Ye

This is the story of a young Chinese-Canadian girl named Grace (Dong-mei) Parker and the struggles she faces when coming to terms with the fact that her birth mother in China gave her up, simply because she was a girl. When Dong-mei was a baby, her mother has left her on the steps of an orphanage with nothing more than a slip of paper with both her and her mother's name on it, and because of this fact, Grace had always been reluctant to learn about her heritage or her roots. Dong-mei (Grace) was then misdiagnosed as being deaf, and because of her imperfection was able to be adopted by a family in Canada.

Grace was openly resistant to any attempts made by her adopted mother to connect her with her past or heritage. Eventually as she grew older however, she becomes less resistant and more curious about why her mother could have abandoned her on the steps of an orphanage, and after years of taking Mandarin lessons (at the insistence of her adopted mother), she chooses to go to China for a business course, and to find some answers about who her mother was, and how she could be so cruel. When she makes the trip to find her roots and the people who gave her up, she learns a different side to her story, and is introduced world drastically different world from the one she was raised in, which gives her some perspective on what happened to her, and on just how the woman who was her birth mother could have just thrown her away.

This story did a good job of explaining the culture of China at that time and how people could have given up their female children. It doesn't excuse the action by any means, but it provides the reader with context and understanding. The story is told from each of the character's perspectives as the novel progresses, so as events occur we are able to live the situation through the eyes of Grace's adopted parents as they deal with trying to connect her with her roots, as well as Grace's while she is resisting. We see the motivation and thought processes going on in her grandfather and father and family as they demonstrate life before Grace was even born, and then the expectations and ideas they had while her birth mother was pregnant. The author does a good job of not demonizing any one individual, but rather painting a picture of the time, which helps place the reader in the character's positions and helps to explain some of the choices they thought were necessary to make.

The novel is written for a teen audience, but does not insult anyone's intelligence. It's very readable. Upon beginning the first chapter I was a little bit put off by Grace's complaining, but was happy to discover that that was not the tone of the novel and was drawn in shortly after. This is a very quick read with a moving plot line, I recommend picking it up.