Throwaway Daughter

Rating:
Summary: Throwaway Daughter
Review: Grace Dong-Mei Parker was adopted from a Chinese orphanage by Canadian parents, and despite their well-meaning efforts, she's adamantly opposed to having anything to do with her Chinese heritage. The sense of identity that language lessons and lunches in Chinatown never accomplish, happens dramatically when she witnesses a news broadcast of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and results in her return to China at the age of twenty to try to track down her birth parents. The circumstances of her birth and abandoment comes out gradually, from several points of view.

Despite being nominated for the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults, this reads like adult fiction to me, especially with the complexity of the narrative (multiple points of view and timeshifts--but it's not as confusing as it sounds). Adjectives include lyrical, bittersweet and Canadian.