Adopting children from overseas is increasing in the US. Between 1985 and 2003 there were 40,496 adoptions of children from China into the US. In the wake of this phenomenon, books addressing the complexities and emotional turbulence of the process of transracial adoption have started to appear with frequency. It is clear from reading these that several cross-cultural issues are at stake. Since the majority of parents who adopt across racial lines are white, concerns about differences between white perceptions of the world and the experiences of transracially adopted children become acute and issues of identity are thrown into sharp focus. Together, these children possess a unique perspective upon transglobal relations. As Sara Dorow observes, “their presence in domestic America demands a reckoning with liminality, especially at the busy intersections where internal relations of race and capital meet trans-Pacific practices of exchange” (8).

Dorow's book succinctly and comprehensively explores these issues. She writes of her project,

As Dorow makes clear, the phenomenon of transracial adoption has an additional dimension, as it is also a tale of gender woe, as almost all Chinese children adopted by overseas parents are abandoned girls and 90 percent of the children in China's orphanages are female. This is the tragic consequence of China's one-child policy in combination with China's traditional cultural preference for male offspring. Thus, as Dorow asserts, transracial adoption and “abandonment set up an impossible contradiction around the child. Her gendered and raced and birthed body demands a normalized continuity of identity; but this relies on gendered cultural explanations that in turn undermine any such coherence” (178).

Dorow turns her attention to the question of China's population policy repeatedly in her book. Numbers of abandoned children have not dropped and pressure continues to make the birth-planning policy appear successful. Where the problem of abandonment is acknowledged, the solutions proposed by the Chinese authorities simply involve greater surveillance of women and even stricter enforcement of birth-planning policy. Yet it is also the case that increasing attention paid to the issue of abandonment and the one-child policy, via books like this, is successfully drawing attention to the issue. But as Dorow reminds us, interested parties face a dilemma: the very conditions that have given rise to the epidemic of female abandonment in China have also enabled many childless couples in America to adopt. There is also a direct inverse relationship between international publicity about China's foundlings and the ease with which prospective adoptive parents are able to adopt. Dorow's own conclusion reflects this: “Finally, however, it is important to note the impossible contradictions of narrating adoption to the satisfaction of all whom it affects. As not only a transnational political economy but also a very personal experience, it invites intense debate” (28). In the light of this, books like Dorow's perform a vital role in drawing international attention to one consequence of China's population policy.