As she vividly describes her childhood in Communist China, her poverty and famine and cruel government policies, I couldn't help but trace my own life events and be painfully aware of the blessings I've received in comparison to her life lived under vise-grip pressures of a government not concerned for its own people. As I read about her eating pancakes made of tree leaves and sleeping through school in the afternoons because of her weakness from hunger, I pictured myself going door-to-door to collect money in milk cartons for the "starving children in China" and now I've been introduced to the first-person story of one of those children.
This book helped me to put a very human face on the stories I've read in the newspaper and studied in history classes. I am a deeply pro-life woman, and yet I can fully empathize with women in China who are forced to submit to abortion because of the relentless, crushing pressure experienced on a daily basis by the women of that country by a government committed to a one-child policy at any cost, which is so graphically explained in this book. Reading it makes me ask myself how strong I could be under the same circumstances.
You will not be able to forget her descriptions of her C-section done without anesthesia because of her desire to avoid the dangers the anesthesia posed to her unborn son, and to admire her courage and the deep mother-love that drove her to do so. And even when she becomes a birth control worker who imprisons and berates and forcibly aborts other women (even her best friend, in labor at full term), you cannot see this woman as a monster herself, but as part of a monstrous system that must be exposed and changed.
This book may change your understanding of abortion forever and make you more committed than ever to ending its destructive power in a very pro-woman way. It will most surely challenge excuses for UNFPA funding of these policies in China. Thank you Chi An, for telling your story!