China Ghosts: My Daughter's Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood

by Jeff Gammage

Book Overview

Aching to expand from a couple to a family, Jeff Gammage--a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer --and his wife, Christine, embarked upon a journey that would carry them across a shifting landscape... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006124029X
• ISBN13: 9780061240294
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Simply Amazing

I devoured this book after someone on an adoption Yahoo Group recommended it and I heard the author on NPR. I have to say it's absolutely amazing. Jeff has extraordinary insight and he pulls no punches. He vividly describes both his incredible love for his daughter and his guilt and anger that she had to stay in an orphanage for 2 years before he could get her. He explores the contradiction between being eternally grateful to a country for allowing him to have his daughter, and being angry with the country whose policies forced his daughter to end up in an orphanage in the first place. This is an incredibly moving book and is impossible to put down. China Ghosts will leave you touched and inspired.

Sensitive and well written

Although I'm not yet a parent myself, Jeff Gammage's memoir of adopting his daughters from China moved me to think that having a child, whether a biological one or an adopted one, is an experience I really don't want to miss. It was especially refreshing to hear a story like this told from the dad's point of view --- a perspective we don't often hear. As a former coworker of Jeff's at the Philadelphia Inquirer, I recognized and appreciated the thoughtful and sensitive approach he brings to every subject he reports. The details of his trip to adopt Jin Yu are dramatic and touching. I liked the fact that Jeff and his wife recognized the loss their daughter experienced and decided to keep her name instead of giving her an Americanized one --- after all, as he's said, it's the one thing she didn't have to give up in leaving China.

Deeply touching and revealing

As the adoptive mom of a Chinese daughter, I have read numerous stories written by the adoptive parents of Chinese girls. This is the one that stood out for me... Jeff Gammage writes so well the thoughts and feelings of a parent who has to deal with so many issues when adopting a child... and the complications that come with adopting a child from China. If you are considering adoption, know that not all China adoptions are like this one, and yet, all China adoptions will have some, if not most, of the feelings, thoughts and issues one will deal with as Jeff documented. If you've been there done that - you will find yourself in this book. And if you just want to know more about China adoptions, I would recommend this book as a must read.

Beautifully written

Jeff Gammage brings the reader into a little known world, the Chinese orphanage, and explains all the feelings an adopting parent has in getting a little girl from this big, mysterious country. He avoids cliches in talking about China, and I was touched by how well he describes his feelings upon becoming a new dad, especially since he initially never saw himself as a father or wanted to be one. But he takes on an epic journey, initially to please his wife, and is overwhelmed by the love he feel for his new daughter, Jin Yu. Gammage has a keen eye for the world of childhood, and he tells a gripping story with drama and insight.

poignant memoir of the heart

This is an interesting memoir of a couple adopting a child. Married for almost two decades Jeff and Christine Gammage decide to expand the family by adopting a Chinese infant. Finally after two years of horrific red tape (no pun intended), they succeeded in Changsha, Hunan Province when two years old silent Jin Yu joins the couple turning them into a family of three. However, as the Gammages will soon learn traversing the governmental bureaucrats and the insane laws to protect the child was the easy journey; parenting is the difficult but more rewarding quest made further complex by a quiet child who speaks a little Chinese while her new parents speak English. Readers will appreciate this poignant memoir of the heart as author Jeff Gammage makes it clear how much he loves his daughter. The insight into the Chinese culture is vivid, but also as lucid is the deep look into the American culture re foreign adoptions. Easy to read, this is a winning bio of a writer's "passage to fatherhood" and his "daughter's journey to America". Harriet Klausner