Reception to follow

Join us for an evening with acclaimed journalist and author Barbara Demick for the book launch of her latest work, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove.

In Daughters of the Bamboo Grove, prizing winning author and National Book Award finalist Barbara Demick, embarks on a journey following the lives of Fangfang and Shuangjie — twins separated at birth — and the extraordinary efforts to reunite them. The compelling narrative delves into the heart-wrenching story of twin sisters torn apart by China's one-child policy, the complex socio-political landscape of China, and the emotional and ethical dimensions of international adoption. Her previous books include Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea and Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town.

Demick will be in conversation with NPR's international correspondent Emily Feng, who brings her own experience and perspective from her reporting work on China. Demick and Feng will also discuss the topic of identity, exploring what it means to be Chinese in China, as covered in Feng's recent book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom, and what it means to be Chinese within the broader Asian diaspora in America. Fangfang, who was adopted by a family in the U.S. and renamed Esther, and Shuangjie, who remained in China, are central to this discussion.

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove will be available for sale during the event, with a book signing and reception to follow.

Speakers

Barbara Demick is a prize-winning author and foreign correspondent. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins is her fourth book, following Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town (2020); Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009); and Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.  She has reported from around the world, most recently as bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Beijing and Seoul. She previously reported from the Middle East and Balkans for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her writing about ordinary people living under siege and repression has been praised for its empathy. Awards include the Samuel Johnson prize (now the Baillie Gifford prize) for non-fiction in the U.K., the Overseas Press Club’s human rights reporting award, the Polk Award and the Robert F. Kennedy award and the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott Prize(2006) --  and has since then served on its independent jury. She is  Her North Korea book was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She was a press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Bagehot fellow in business journalism at Columbia University and a visiting professor of journalism at Princeton University teaching a course on Covering Repressive Regimes. She lives in New York City.

Emily Feng is an award-winning correspondent for NPR covering China, Taiwan and beyond, reporting on everything from semiconductors to drones, environmental wastelands to girl bands. Formerly based in Beijing and Taipei, she now lives in Washington D.C. She is the author of Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping's China (2025). Before joining NPR in 2019, she served as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. In 2024, she was chosen by Boston University for their Hugo Shong Reporting Asia Award for exhibiting "the highest standards of international journalism in a series of reports on matters of importance specific to Asia." She was 2023 winner of the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, awarded to a rising public media journalist 35 years of age or younger. She also received the 2022 Shorenstein Journalism Award for her overall reporting on the Asia Pacific. Her human rights coverage has been shortlisted by the British Journalism Awards in 2018 and won two Human Rights Press awards. Her radio coverage of the coronavirus epidemic in China was recognized by the National Headliners Award. She spearheaded coverage that has won two Gracie Awards. She was also named a Livingston Award finalist in 2021.

This program is part of the Asian Diaspora Project.