Bamboo Women: Stories from Ming Quong, a Chinese Orphanage in California

In 1935, at the age of two, Nona Mock 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 21 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. Praise for Bamboo Women: “Nona Mock Wyman tells an essential San Francisco Bay Area Chinatown story that has resided too long in the dark recesses of painful memories.” --William Wong, author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America "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 “Compelling.” --Ben Fong Torres, author of The Rice Room: Growing Up Chinese-American from Number Two Son to Rock 'n' Roll