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Stephan Molnar-Fenton talks about An Mei
I began writing An Mei’s Strange and Wondrous Journey
one year to the day after I returned from China with my daughter, Angelica-Tao
An Mei. The book was to be a gift to her and all the wonderful people
I had met in China.
But in truth the origin of this book goes back over eighty
years; to February 1917, to be exact. For it was in that year that
my grandmother, with her two small sons, my father and his brother, fled
the pogroms sweeping across Russia and journeyed to America.
However, World War One was still being fought, and their
journey was long, circuitous, and dangerous. After several weeks
the freight ship they were traveling on docked in Shanghai, China, and
abandoned its passengers. My grandmother was penniless; her
children were starving. She sold the beautiful tablecloth and eight
matching napkins that she had spent many months hand-embroidering.
And then, when the money she had received was exhausted, she cut and sold
her flowing red hair to a local doll factory.
As children, we would be told this story, and it
never failed to frighten and astonish us—for us my grandmother was the
first superhero. But the story always ended with the same line—that
one day one of her grandchildren would journey to China and return with
my grandmother’s hair.
Little did I realize at that time that I would be the
one to journey to China. The first morning I arrived in Beijing,
I searched the air of the Tiananmen Square for strands of my grandmother’s
beautiful hair. The next day in Wuhan, I met my daughter, An Mei,
and we began our long journey home.
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Stephen
Molnar-Fenton, Author/Adoptive Parent, is active in a number of adoption
organizations and, as an attorney, has represented a number of American
families adopting children from China. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Vivienne
Flesher, Illustrator, has traveled extensively in the Far East. She
has won gold and silver medals from the Society of Illustrators and has
illustrated several picture bookss, including