A successful Canadian journalist (and a hometown girl) will be in Sudbury, Monday, Sept.15 to talk about her book, The Lucky Ones: Our Stories of Adopting Children from China.
Ann Rauhala, a former foreign editor with The Globe and Mail, grew up in Lively, and now teaches journalism at Ryerson University. She has edited a collection of writings by parents, who like her and her husband, have adopted children from China.
Rauhala's own essay reveals how her husband and son decided on a name for their new baby.
Many people remark these children, mostly girls, are lucky to have been "rescued" after being abandoned because of China's one-child policy, says Rauhala.
"Make no mistake. The mothers and fathers of children from China know we're the lucky ones."
Rauhala has been pleasantly surprised to learn many people, who don't have any experience with adoption, have enjoyed the book simply because it is a good read.
Contributors include actress Sonja Smits, journalists Evan Solomon and Havard Gould, novelist Lilian Nattel and poet Susan Olding. Teens Jasmine Bent and Lia Calderone, both adopted from China as babies, share their own stories.
The book's forward is written by Jan Wong, who attended university in China and was the Beijing correspondent for The Globe and Mail from 1988 to 1994.
"The story begins in loss and grief. In the case of these little girls, they lost the chance to be raised by their birth parents in their home country, and for us parents, a lot of us ended up doing this because we faced infertility or in some case tragedy, and yet it has a happy ending," says Rauhala.
About 7,000 Chinese-born children were adopted annually by parents in North America, Australia and Europe since the late 1980s. This number is now declining since China has softened its population control policy and tightened its rules on international adoption.
"These girls are probably going to be a real anomaly
because the number of kids being adopting from China is
declining. They are being studied by psychologists and
sociologists to see how they are adjusting" to being
adopted into a foreign country, says Rauhala.
Before studying at the University of Toronto, Rauhala went to
Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School. Her parents operated a motel on
the old Highway 17 W. Her mother and siblings still live in the
city.
She recalls that when she was a young girl growing up in Waters Township, her address was RR1 Copper Cliff. Many years later, when she and her husband adopted their daughter, they were delighted to learn she too came from a mining town in China.
"The name of the town translates to Copper Mountain, so we all joked, 'Great news. The baby is also from Copper Cliff'," she says.
Members of the South End branch library book club have purchased six copies of The Lucky Ones and have donated them to the library system in memory of Denyse Bernier who died in June of this year.
Rauhala will talk about the process of adopting a child from China at the main branch of the Greater Sudbury Public Library, Sept. 15 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. She will sign copies of her book following the formal presentation.
