May 9, 2013 Adoption from China Subject of May 29 Lecture

The Library of Congress Asian Division will sponsor a lecture and book signing by British-Chinese broadcast journalist and writer Xinran. The event will be held from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 29 in the Whittall Pavilion, located on the ground floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building at 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public.

The Library of Congress Asian Division houses the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) collection, which includes materials on peoples living in the United States with origins in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Guam, Samoa or other Pacific Islands. The collection complements materials housed throughout the Library of Congress that support the study of Asian American Pacific Islander history. Information on some of the AAPI collections is available online at www.loc.gov/rr/asian/aapi/.

Xinran will relate stories of Chinese birth mothers published in her 2011 book “Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love.” Xinran connected with Chinese women whose daughters were adopted overseas through a call-in radio show she hosted in Nanjing, China, from 1989 to 1995, called “Words on the Night Breeze.”

She will also discuss one of her other works on women in China, “The Good Women of China,” which has been translated into more than 30 languages. In addition, she will talk about The Mothers’ Bridge of Love, an organization she set up in 2004 to create a “bridge of understanding” between China and the West focused on the birth and adoptive cultures of adoptees.

In 1997, Xinran moved from China to London, where she now lives. Xinran has also written “Motherbridge of Love,” named one of Time magazine’s top 10 children’s books of 2007; “Sky Burial”; “What the Chinese Don’t Eat”; “Miss Chopsticks”; and “China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation.” She was nominated as one of the Top 100 Most Inspirational Women in 2011 in the Guardian newspaper.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov.

The Library of Congress is a central repository for all types of Asian publications that are not broadly available at other locations in the United States. Initiated in 1869 with a gift of 10 works in 934 volumes offered to the United States by the Emperor of China, the Library's Asian collection of more than 3 million items is the largest and most comprehensive outside of Asia. For more information about the division and its holdings, go to www.loc.gov/rr/asian/.