Review of ‘Daughters of the Bamboo Grove’ (Barbara Demick) and ‘Leftover Women’ (10th Anniversary Edition)’ (Leta Hong Fincher) from the Los Angeles Review of Books

In her new book, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins, Barbara Demick analyzes how the one-child policy was not just responsible for the gender imbalance in China but also contributed to tens of thousands of international adoptions, not all of which were conducted honorably or honestly.

With the easing of the one-child policy and the decreasing population rate, one could also presume that Chinese women and girls now enjoy more freedoms than in recent decades. Leta Hong Fincher shows this is not true. Just over a decade ago, she published Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (2014), an astonishing book that revealed the dismal implications for young Chinese women in light of the campaign to push them into marriage before the age of 26. In 2023, Hong Fincher came out with a 10th anniversary updated edition of the book, which pairs nicely with Demick’s and provides a fuller picture of women in contemporary China.