Lucky Girl »

Mei-Ling Hopgood is an award-winning journalist who has written for the Detroit Free Press, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, National Geographic Traveler, and the Miami Herald and has worked in the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau. She lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with her husband and daughter.

Mei-Ling Hopgood was an all-American girl. She grew up in the Midwest, studied journalism at the University of Missouri, and became a reporter for a Michigan newspaper. Adopted when she was a baby, she was never really curious about her Asian roots. Then one day, when she was in her twenties, her birth family from Taiwan came calling—on the phone, on the computer, by fax—in a language she didn’t understand. The Wangs wanted to meet her; they wanted her to return home. But this unexpected reunion has a price, as she uncovers devastating secrets that haunt the Wangs to this day.

Lucky Girl journeys into Chinese culture—its magnificent sights, war-torn history, and sumptuous foods—while revealing the personal suffering wrought by the country’s tightly held traditions. Mei-Ling’s is a tale of love and loss, frustration, hilarity, deep sadness, and great discovery as she comes to understand the true meaning of family.

The Barnes & Noble Review

I suspect many adoptees have been told they were lucky at some point in their lives: fortunate to have escaped an unknown fate; blessed to have been chosen by a new family who loves them. For Mei-Ling Hopgood, self-professed "Lucky Girl," it seems less about being told than about arriving at the conclusion herself. Kismet was not lost on this sixth daughter of a poor Taiwanese farming family, given up just after birth. After eight months in the care of an American nun, she crossed oceans and continents to be placed in the arms of the Hopgoods, a forward-thinking couple who fell in love with the little, dark bundle immediately. Rather than grow up unwanted by a family on a single-minded quest to produce male offspring, Mei-Ling describes an idyllic childhood, as a treasured daughter given every opportunity to succeed. But Mei-Ling never dwelled on her past, so it's a surprise when it comes to find her at age 23, at the beginning of her career as a journalist. With the skilled objectivity of a reporter, she chronicles a journey that takes her back to the welcoming bosom of her birth family and to Taiwan, over a complicated landscape fraught with confusing emotions. Though adoptees in reunion with their own birth parents will find plenty of familiar terrain in these pages, Mei-Ling's memoir goes well beyond an elated account of first impressions to cover the darker side of rejoining a family-in-progress. In an unflinching pursuit of truth, she pushes the Wang family's skeletons out of decades-long shadows and, in the process, learns a few things about herself. "You can't change your past, but you can choose where to go with what you are given." We should all be so lucky. --Lydia Dishman

Prologue 1

1 Come Back Taiwan 3

2 The Birth of a Family 19

3 Twisting Fate 34

4 The Odd Couple 44

5 Happy Days 66

6 The Return 81

7 A Perfect Reunion 101

8 Meimei 113

9 Through the Looking Glass 122

10 Crosscurrents 133

11 The Biology of Adoption 145

12 Handmade Dumplings 154

13 Daddy's Girl 168

14 The Boy 180

15 Mother-Daughter Banquet 190

16 The Namesakes 213

17 The Lucky Eight 233

Epilogue 240