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China’s Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy
In the thirty-five years since China instituted its One-Child Policy, 120,000 children—mostly girls—have left China through international adoption, including 85,000 to the United States. It’s generally assumed that this diaspora is the result of China’s approach to population control, but there is also the underlying belief that the majority of adoptees are daughters because the One-Child Policy often collides with the traditional preference for a son. While there is some truth to this, it does not tell the full story—a story with deep personal resonance to Kay Ann Johnson, a China scholar and mother to an adopted Chinese daughter.
Johnson spent years talking with the Chinese parents driven to relinquish their daughters during the brutal birth-planning campaigns of the 1990s and early 2000s, and, with China’s Hidden Children, she paints a startlingly different picture. The decision to give up a daughter, she shows, is not a facile one, but one almost always fraught with grief and dictated by fear. Were it not for the constant threat of punishment for breaching the country’s stringent birth-planning policies, most Chinese parents would have raised their daughters despite the cultural preference for sons. With clear understanding and compassion for the families, Johnson describes their desperate efforts to conceal the birth of second or third daughters from the authorities. As the Chinese government cracked down on those caught concealing an out-of-plan child, strategies for surrendering children changed—from arranging adoptions or sending them to live with rural family to secret placement at carefully chosen doorsteps and, finally, abandonment in public places. In the twenty-first century, China’s so-called abandoned children have increasingly become “stolen” children, as declining fertility rates have left the dwindling number of children available for adoption more vulnerable to child trafficking. In addition, government seizures of locally—but illegally—adopted children and children hidden within their birth families mean that even legal adopters have unknowingly adopted children taken from parents and sent to orphanages.
The image of the “unwanted daughter” remains commonplace in Western conceptions of China. With China’s Hidden Children, Johnson reveals the complex web of love, secrecy, and pain woven in the coerced decision to give one’s child up for adoption and the profound negative impact China’s birth-planning campaigns have on Chinese families.
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£11.40 -
Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family
An NPR Best Book of 2022
An incredible, deeply reported story of identical twins Isabella and Hà, born in Viêt Nam and raised on opposite sides of the world, each knowing little about the other’s existence until they were reunited as teenagers, against all odds.
“Stirring and unforgettable—a breathtaking adoption saga like no other.” —Robert Kolker
It was 1998 in Nha Trang, Việt Nam, and Liên struggled to care for her newborn twin girls. Hà was taken in by Liên’s sister, and she grew up in a rural village with her aunt, going to school and playing outside with the neighbors. They had sporadic electricity and frequent monsoons. Hà’s twin sister, Loan, was adopted by a wealthy, white American family who renamed her Isabella. Isabella grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with a nonbiological sister, Olivia, also adopted from Việt Nam. Isabella and Olivia attended a predominantly white Catholic school, played soccer, and prepared for college.But when Isabella’s adoptive mother learned of her biological twin back in Việt Nam, all of their lives changed forever. Award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki spent years and hundreds of hours interviewing each of the birth and adoptive family members. She brings the girls’ experiences to life on the page, told from their own perspectives, challenging conceptions about adoption and what it means to give a child a good life. Hayasaki contextualizes the sisters’ experiences with the fascinating and often sinister history of twin studies, intercountry and transracial adoption, and the nature-versus-nurture debate, as well as the latest scholarship and conversation surrounding adoption today, especially among adoptees.
For readers of All You Can Ever Know and American Baby, Somewhere Sisters is a richly textured, moving story of sisterhood and coming of age, told through the remarkable lives of young women who have redefined the meaning of family for themselves.
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The pink guide to adoption for lesbians and gay men 3rd edition
How easy is it for lesbian and gay couples to adopt? Can we adopt jointly? Is the adoption process any different from heterosexual adoption? Is it true that only hard-to-place children get placed with lesbians and gay men?The Pink Guide to Adoption is definitely the right read for anyone asking themselves these questions. It is an essential step-by-step guide for lesbians and gay men who are considering adoption in the UK, whether as single parents or jointly.
Illustrated throughout with quotations from those who have already experienced, or are currently involved in, the adoption process, this fully updated third edition also has useful points to consider for those wishing to embark on the adoption journey. Informative and inspiring, these stories bring to life the reality of what adoption means. They describe the highs and lows, the welcome they have received and also the prejudices encountered, the difficulties and the rewards. Many reveal how their lives have changed immeasurably since their adopted children moved in.
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Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Updated and Expanded
TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION, UPDATED AND EXPANDEDWhen Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics was published twenty years ago, it became an instant classic-a beautifully written study tracing the social disintegration of “Ballybran,” a small village on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. In this richly detailed and sympathetic book, Nancy Scheper-Hughes explores the symptoms of the community’s decline: emigration, malaise, unwanted celibacy, damaging patterns of childrearing, fear of intimacy, suicide, and schizophrenia. Following a recent return to “Ballybran,” Scheper-Hughes reflects in a new preface and epilogue on the well-being of the community and on her attempts to reconcile her responsibility to honest ethnography with respect for the people who shared their homes and their secrets with her.
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£22.80£25.70 -
Mental Codes (The Life Series)
The Secret Mental Codes of the mind possess the power to miraculously transform any life into a source of unbelievable power and success.Dr. Michael J. and Leslie P. Duckett have decoded the Mental Code Formula and made it available to the general public for the first time.Because of the power of the Mental Code Discovery, there is no telling what it will do for the entire population on this planet. Human Beings have just been given the most powerful ability in the universe to create whatever life they so desire—The Mental Codes.And now…it can happen for you!Read more
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MAKING REPORT WRITING EASY: Mental Capacity Assessments: A simple and practical guide based on the Mental Capacity Act 2005
Are you satisfied that your Mental Capacity Assessment would stand up to legal scrutiny in The Court of Protection, where a dispute needed to be settled? If not, then this guide is for you. This guide provides a step-by-step process of how to complete capacity assessments using the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and its Code of Practice. There are 4 SOLID example reports on capacity around finances, capacity to litigate, capacity to choose a lasting power of attorney. It can be used by health and social care workers. It is informative and easy to use and provides a clear description of the requirements when using the 2 – stage test to ensure that assessments are legal, strengths based and person-centred. This guide describes how to assess capacity and what a good assessment of capacity should look like. It also provides sample questions to ask based on the specific decision to be made. This Simple Guide to Report Writing will be a vital resource for any health and social care professional working with individuals who may lack capacity to make specific decisions.Read more
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Drink Maps in Victorian Britain
What is a ‘drink map’? It may sound like a pub guide, yet it actually refers to a type of late nineteenth-century British map designed specifically to shock and shame people into drinking less. This book explores how drink maps of particular cities were published in an attempt to fight increasingly rampant alcohol consumption, from Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield to Oxford, London and Norwich. Featuring red symbols to indicate where alcohol was sold, these special street maps were posted prominently in public places, submitted as evidence, sent to Members of Parliament and published in newspapers to show just how inebriated a neighbourhood could be. They promoted the message that having fewer places to buy alcohol was the answer to reducing widespread crime, poverty and sickness. And they worked – at first. After consulting a drink map in one town, judges decided to close half the licensed shops because even then no one had to walk more than two minutes to buy a beer. Illustrated with original maps, advertisements and temperance propaganda, the story of their brief history is told amidst a tangle of licensing laws, rogue magistrates, irate brewers, ardent temperance organizers and accounts of the complex role alcohol played across all levels of Victorian society.Read more
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Life Below Stairs: in the Victorian and Edwardian Country House (National Trust History & Heritage)
From the cook, butler and housekeeper to the footman, lady’s maid and nanny, this is a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of some of Britain’s grandest houses.
The largely untold stories of innumerable, rather humble, lives spent ‘in service’ are lying just below the surface of many great houses; the physical evidence can be seen in surviving servants’ quarters, the material of their everyday life, even their uniforms and possessions.
This account provides a fascinating glimpse at who’s who behind the scenes, from the cook, butler and housekeeper to the footmen, lady’s maids, governesses and tutors, nannies and nursemaids. Giving a fascinating insight into the heirarchy within the servant’s quarters – from the power-wielding cook to the ever-discreet butler – this guide describes how relationships were forged and changed as the gap between upstairs and downstairs was bridged.
Describing their typical working day as well as the holidays, entertainments and pastimes enjoyed on a rare day off, not to mention the whirl of the social season, this previously ‘unwritten history’ recalls vividly the nature of their lives below stairs.
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£14.80£19.00 -
Spirits, Seers & Séances: Victorian Spiritualism, Magic & the Supernatural
Spiritualism in the Age of Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe
A woman wearing a black veil convenes a séance. A magician puts a volunteer into a trance. A fortune-teller leans over a crystal ball. Everyone knows what Victorian mysticism looks like because our modern imagery, language, and practice of magic borrows heavily from the Victorians. But we have little understanding of its spiritual, cultural, and historical foundations.
What made the Victorians turn to mediumship, hypnotism, and fortune-telling? What were they afraid of? What were they seeking?
This book explores the history of automatic writing, cartomancy, clairvoyance, and more. It reveals how Victorian belief in ghosts, fairies, and nature spirits shaped our celebrations of Halloween and Christmas. With historic examples and hands-on exercises, you will discover how spiritualism in the time of Jack the Ripper, Jane Eyre, “A Christmas Carol,” and Dracula left such a profound impact on both the past and present.
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£11.70£15.20 -
Everyday Life in Victorian London
Everyday Life in Victorian London explores the daily lives of adults and children, aristocracy and middle classes, working poor and the ‘submerged tenth’ underclass. It shows the different faces of London, with its many extremes and contrasts – by day and by night; busy and peaceful; ugly and beautiful; safe and dangerous. It looks at the River Thames and its importance; the City, West and East Ends; at work, leisure, health, hospitals, education, food, clothes, housing, shops and markets, transport and infrastructure, public services, crime, the police and prisons, immigrant communities, and important events such as the Great Exhibition of 1851 and Queen Victoria’s golden and diamond jubilees. Daily life in the capital will be explored at three levels – above ground (views from hot air balloons), at ground level, and below ground (the sewage system, the underground railway and cemeteries). A central theme is the rapid growth in population throughout the century due to immigration from the countryside and abroad, and the resulting expansion into ‘The Monster City’. The final chapter describes London at the end of the century with improved transport, a newly embanked Thames, a sewage system, housing for the poor, public buildings, hospitals and prisons – a transformed capital of a great empire and the embryo of the London we know today.Read more
£18.20£21.80Everyday Life in Victorian London
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Victorian Fashion: 822 (Shire Library)
The sweeping crinolines, corsets, bustles, bonnets and parasols of Victorian Britain are indispensable to our period dramas, and their influences can still be seen within burlesque and steampunk fashions. This is no surprise, as nineteenth-century clothing was so wide-ranging and decorative. We might unfairly think gentlemen’s costume to be rather plain and uniform, but this is more by contrast to the overwhelming ostentation, luxury fabrics, fine accessories and constantly evolving silhouettes of ladies’ fashion. This colourful introduction to what the Victorians wore describes the vibrant, fancy materials and lace edging at one end of the spectrum, and the tightlaced sobriety of mourning apparel at the other. It examines both high fashion imports from Paris and more modest everyday wear, evening costume, bridal styles, children’s clothes and sportswear, and explores the social and cultural backdrop to clothing in Britain’s great age of industry and empire.Read more
£7.60£9.50Victorian Fashion: 822 (Shire Library)
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The A-Z of Victorian Crime
Few things are more evocative of Victorian Britain than its criminals; they are, together with railways, gas lamps and swirling fog, vital ingredients in any Victorian melodrama. The truth, however, was often stranger, more thrilling and more horrifying than fiction. In this book, four eminent crime historians reveal the realities of this aspect of Victorian life, illuminating not just the criminals and their victims, but also the policemen, forensic scientists and others who rubbed shoulders with the nineteenth-century underworld. Notorious crimes – the Road Hill Murder, the Balham Mystery and Jack the Ripper – stand alongside long-forgotten, neglected cases; the most shocking and terrifying cases appear next to everyday horrors, some stunning and some merely sad. This unique work of reference deserves a place on every true crime reader’s bookshelf.Read more
£9.60£10.40The A-Z of Victorian Crime
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A Victorian Lady’s Guide to Fashion and Beauty
What did a Victorian lady wear for a walk in the park? How did she style her hair for an evening at the theatre? And what products might she have used to soothe a sunburn or treat an unsightly blemish? Mimi Matthews answers these questions and more as she takes readers on a decade-by-decade journey through Victorian fashion and beauty history.
Women’s clothing changed dramatically during the course of the Victorian era. Necklines rose, waistlines dropped, and Gothic severity gave way to flounces, frills, and an abundance of trimmings. Sleeves ballooned up and skirts billowed out. The crinoline morphed into the bustle and steam-moulded corsets cinched women’s waists ever tighter.
As fashion was evolving, so too were trends in ladies’ hair care and cosmetics. An era which began by prizing natural, barefaced beauty ended with women purchasing lip and cheek rouge, false hairpieces and pomades, and fashionable perfumes made with expensive spice oils and animal essences.
Using research from nineteenth century beauty books, fashion magazines, and lady’s journals, Mimi Matthews brings the intricacies of a Victorian lady’s toilette into modern day focus. In the process, she gives readers a glimpse of the social issues that influenced women’s clothing and the societal outrage that was an all too frequent response to those bold females who used fashion and beauty as a means of asserting their individuality and independence.Read more
£11.60£12.30A Victorian Lady’s Guide to Fashion and Beauty
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A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain (Brief Histories)
The Victorian era has dominated the popular imagination like no other period, but these myths and stories also give a very distorted view of the 19th century.
The early Victorians were much stranger that we usually imagine, and their world would have felt very different from our own and it was only during the long reign of the Queen that a modern society emerged in unexpected ways.
Using character portraits, events, and key moments Paterson brings the real life of Victorian Britain alive – from the lifestyles of the aristocrats to the lowest ranks of the London slums. This includes the right way to use a fan, why morning visits were conducted in the afternoon, what the Victorian family ate and how they enjoyed their free time, as well as the Victorian legacy today – convenience food, coffee bars, window shopping, mass media, and celebrity culture.
Praise for Dicken’s London:
Out of the babble of voices, Michael Paterson has been able to extract the essence of London itself. Read this book and re-enter the labyrinth of a now-ancient city.’ Peter Ackroyd
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The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed
The bestselling social history of Victorian domestic life, told through the letters, diaries, journals and novels of 19th-century men and women.
The Victorian age is both recent and unimaginably distant. In the most prosperous and technologically advanced nation in the world, people carried slops up and down stairs; buried meat in fresh earth to prevent mould forming; wrung sheets out in boiling water with their bare hands. This drudgery was routinely performed by the parents of people still living, but the knowledge of it has passed as if it had never been. Running water, stoves, flush lavatories – even lavatory paper – arrived slowly throughout the century, and most were luxuries available only to the prosperous.
Judith Flanders, author of the widely acclaimed ‘A Circle of Sisters’, has written an incisive and irresistible portrait of Victorian domestic life. The book itself is laid out like a house, following the story of daily life from room to room: from childbirth in the master bedroom, through the scullery, kitchen and dining room – cleaning, dining, entertaining – on upwards, ending in the sickroom and death.
Through a collage of diaries, letters, advice books, magazines and paintings, Flanders shows how social history is built up out of tiny domestic details. Through these we can understand the desires, motivations and thoughts of the age.
Many people today live in Victorian terraces, and so the houses themselves are familiar, but the lives are not. ‘The Victorian House’ will change all that.
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The Hidden Injuries of Class
In this reissue of the 1972 classic of social anatomy, Richard Sennets adds a new introduction to shows how the injuries of class persist into the 21st century. In this intrepid, groundbreaking book, Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb uncover and define a new form of class conflict in America?an internal conflict in the heart and mind of the blue-collar worker who measures his own value against those lives and occupations to which our society gives a special premium.The authors conclude that in the games of hierarchical respect, no class can emerge the victor; and that true egalitarianism can be achieved only by rediscovering diverse concepts of human dignity. Examining personal feelings in terms of a totality of human relations, and looking beyond the struggle for economic survival, The Hidden Injuries of Class takes an important step forward in the sociological critique of everyday life.Read more
£12.00£14.20The Hidden Injuries of Class
£12.00£14.20