The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China’s one-child policy, from acclaimed journalist and National Book Award finalist Barbara Demick.

In September 2000, a woman gave birth to twin girls in a small hut behind her brother’s home in China’s Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to their family but also not their mother’s first children. In 2002, enforcers of the notorious one-child policy violently snatched Fangfang from her home. Her parents never imagined that their missing daughter had been sent as far as the United States and adopted by an American family with no knowledge of her kidnapping. After having followed this story as the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Demick investigates the origins, shocking cruelty, and legacy of China’s one-child rule; the rise of international adoption and the religious currents that buoyed it; and the exceedingly rare phenomenon of twin separation. Through Demick’s indefatigable reporting, will the sisters finally reunite—and will they feel whole again?

Barbara Demick worked on Daughters of the Bamboo Grove during her 2020-2021 term as the inaugural Janice B. and Milford D. Gerton / Arts and Letters Foundation Fellow at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She will discuss her book with bestselling author Jessica Bruder.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Barbara Demick is an author and foreign correspondent. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption and Separated Twins, her fourth book, was written at the New York Public Library—first in the Cullman Center and later in the Allen Room. Her previous books are Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood, and Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, which won the Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Demick was based in Beijing for the Los Angeles Times from 2007 to 2014, and in previous postings covered Korea, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

Jessica Bruder is the author of three nonfiction books, including the New York Times bestseller Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, which was translated into two dozen languages and adapted into an Oscar-winning film. A New York Times Notable Book and an Editors’ Choice selection, Nomadland also won the Discover Award and was a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and the Helen Bernstein Book Award. Her stories have been featured on the covers of the Atlantic, WIRED, Harper’s, and Audubon magazines, as well as in the pages of New York Magazine, the Guardian, the Nation, and the New York Times. Bruder is working on a book about mutual aid and abortion access. A Cullman Center Fellow in 2023-2024, she is currently a Type Media Center fellow and teaches narrative nonfiction at Columbia Journalism School.

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ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs.

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The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.