Bamboo Women

"In her groundbreaking new book, Nona Mock Wyman intimately explores the lives of her "sisters" who grew up in the Bay Area's Ming Quong Chinese orphanage—revealing secrets, pain, and the lifetime legacies of friendship that developed among the girls, who for myriad painful reasons came to call the orphanage home. Beautifully and wrenchingly told, Bamboo Women is a courageous look into a little-known world and an affirmation of the human spirit."—Karin Evans, author of The Lost Daughters of China

In 1935, at the age of two, Nona Mock Wyman was abandoned at the Ming Quong orphanage in Los Gatos, California. From that first, searing memory of seeing her mother walk out of her life forever, Mock turned grief into strength. Bamboo Women tells twenty-one inspiring stories of coming-of-age from the women of Ming Quong, a home for orphaned Chinese girls in the San Francisco Bay Area. Wyman introduces us to her "sisters" and how their bonds of love and friendship carried them through life, love, loss, career, and family.

Nona Mock Wyman is the author of Chopstick Childhood (In a Land of Silver Spoons). She lives in Walnut Creek, California.