An Excerpt from The Silent Archives (China's Missing Daughters)

In the rural villages of Southern China, history keeps its own kind of silence. This piece gathers imagined voices from those who stayed and those who disappeared... grandmothers who screamed from rooftops, siblings who chased after trucks, mothers and fathers who cannot speak what they remember.

Since beginning my own birth family search, I've realized that for most of my life I believed I was unwanted- left out with that evening's trash. But reading, researching, and hearing from families who have searched from the other side has shown me how wrong I was.

That isn't to say there weren't voluntary abandonments but the word "voluntary" erases a lot of nuance. How voluntary is it when a 2nd or "illegal" child couldn't be registered which meant they couldn't attend school, receive health care, or even travel inside their own country? How voluntary is it when fathers still wander cities handing out flyers, or mothers still wait at orphanage gates for any scrap of news.

I'm an adoptee from southern China, raised in America. Although I was back one time when I was 16 in the big picture of things I still don't know much about the place that could've been my home. I'm open to feedback as the things imagined and even some of the language used is coming from a place of genuine desire to learn but all the same, second hand knowledge.

This story is imaged, a culmination of the things I've learned, grieved, and started to try to understand. It isn't mean to speak for any one story or person but to give language to the silence so many of us inherited.

Thank you if you choose to read.