20 Jul / Lucky Girl: A Memoir by Mei-Ling Hopgood
The first reaction to finishing Lucky Girl is ‘lucky readers.’ Definitely of the ‘you can’t make this stuff up’-genre, journalist Mei-Ling Hopgood‘s debut memoir is one lucky surprise after another. Paced just right to keep you reading, the Taiwanese-born Hopgood reveals a remarkable story of her Midwest adoption to a loving, nurturing family and her reunion more than two decades later with her sprawling birthfamily on the other side of the world.
To share Hopgood’s emotional adventure in her own words should not be denied lucky readers … so feel free stop reading here. If you want a few more enticing tidbits, read on …
Adopted at just seven months from Taiwan, Hopgood grew up the oldest child in a close-knit family of five, including two younger adopted brothers originally from Korea (one of her brothers becomes a local politician in adulthood!). While she always knew she was adopted, she spent most of her ‘lucky’ life without too much curiosity about her Asian heritage.
In early 1997, Hopgood was a St. Louis-based reporter, in her early 20s, in the midst of preparing for a party she was hosting in her new apartment. It was the Year of the Ox again, two cycles from her own Ox birth. A phone call from Sister Maureen, the nun who facilitated Hopgood’s adoption, brings shocking news: Sister Maureen reveals not only birthparents who are longing to see her, but six sisters and a brother in Taiwan, and yet another sister in Switzerland who had also been given up for adoption.
The Chinese New Year celebration was fast approaching … and Hopgood’s birthfamily was hoping, longing, begging for a family reunion: “I felt elated and strange, with only a vague sense that much of what I knew about who I was and what I believed about my past and future was about to change.” Understatement indeed.
Go get the book – it just came out in paperback last month to make it more accessible … and portable! Good thing because you’re going to want to take it with you wherever you go to find out what happens next … Lucky you!
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009