In the Year of the Ox by Hannah Amgott
A tale of love, hope, survival, and the evolution of an adoptive mother.

In Memory of Hannah

The Pearl Street Publishing First Book Contest is dedicated to Hannah Amgott who passed away on September 8, 2005.

In the Year of the Ox
Memoir and Poems
by Hannah Amgott
130 pages
Online Price $10.00
Shipping and Handling within the US $2.00
ISBN  0-972268847

Excerpt
About the Book
About The Author
 

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About the Book
In the mid-’80s, home pregnancy tests were in their “infancy” and, therefore, not particularly reliable. Hannah Amgott’s test resulted in a false positive—due, unbeknownst to her doctor and herself, to incipient menopause at age 35. It is with this disappointment that her memoir begins, in total juxtaposition to the intense joy with which it ends, as she is handed her daughter for the first time outside a hotel room in Southern China.

On the surface, In the Year of the Ox recounts an increasingly common story: infertility as a catalyst for adoption. What is unique about this story is that it covers twelve years of experiences and people in Hannah’s life that contributed to her interest in the “adoption option.” In addition to describing the relationships and events that influenced that decision, In the Year of the Ox is a tale of personal survival that goes beyond the roadblocks, fits and starts, and stresses one has to endure in the international adoption arena. Through multiple genres of prose memoir, journal entries, letters, and poetry, she conveys the scope and impact of the milestones and emotions she experienced over a full, twelve-year Chinese zodiac cycle.

The Author’s thoughts on crafting In the Year of the Ox
Friends and family were supportive, yet incredulous, when I told them I had written a book. They couldn’t imagine how I, an older working mother of a young child, found the time and energy to write at all. I’d love to be able to say that I sat down the day we got home from China and assiduously chronicled the twelve years of my life prior to adopting my daughter. True, I did write a third or so of the book during the first year that Elyse was part of our family; she was a better muse than any that had inspired me earlier in my life. In actuality, the kernel of the idea occurred to me in China, not only to put a book together for her, but also to include appropriate essays, journal entries, and poems I had already written.

The road to adoption in China begins with abandonment. The economic and cultural exigencies that cause Chinese biological parents to leave their children—predominantly daughters—where authorities can find them, also cause them to hide their identities, as there is no intra-country system of adoption and abandonment is illegal. As a result, those Chinese infants who survive and are adopted internationally have an abiding need for a sense of history, belonging, and grounding. Throughout the writing of my book, I had one aim in mind: to craft something lasting and meaningful as a legacy for my daughter

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