Auburn, Ala. (PRWEB) September 18, 2013
Dr. Effie Piliouni Albrecht suffered the painful loss of a child because a driver was talking on his cell phone while on the road. What was most painful was that Irma was her only biological child. Before Irma’s death, she had insisted on adopting a sister for her. On the other side of the world, many Chinese women choose to defy both tradition and their government’s method of population control in order to give their daughters a chance to live by leaving them in places where they can be found and eventually adopted. Such painful tragedies, the Chinese mothers’ amazing manifestation of human love and decency in the face of injustice and Albrecht’s adoption of her two daughters from China, gave birth to Albrecht’s new book, titled “Regeneration: Made in China”.
The book is about the worst human loss – the loss of a child. It is also about the challenging venture of reconnecting to life and about the joy of giving two Chinese daughters, Veronica and Melina, the chances Albrecht’s lost one will never have. It is also a book about China, a beautiful, huge and amazing country that is simultaneously engaged in the past and the present but not able to guess where the future will take it because it attempts to marry tradition and unbridled capitalism without much thought of the consequences. Finally, it is a book about beauty which has a way to rise above dust and ashes and act as a balsam for pain, a salve for grief and an antidote for ugliness.
China is the most discussed, admired, maligned and feared country in the world. According to Albrecht, “China has been haunted by the overpopulation issue for quite a while, but has failed to educate its people in contraception and family planning. Instead, it has relied on the cruel but convenient tradition of irreverence for women. The government forces women to abort their female fetuses or, even worse, to kill their daughters as soon as they are born.” Hence, the book is highly relevant and controversial as Albrecht brings into the spotlight China’s one child policy.
“Regeneration: Made in China” is no ordinary memoir. It is a provocative eye-opener whose story spans moral, social, political and even spiritual realms, with powerful themes like China’s controversial practices, adoption, loss and re-engagement with life through endurance and mindfulness, eliminating egotism and selfishness by gifting love and affection, and art and beauty as powerful medicines for the ills of the soul. Albrecht has indeed published a deeply personal yet universal work that has the potential to touch and change countless lives.
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About the Author
Effie Piliouni Albrecht was born in Athens, Greece, where she had her basic and undergraduate education in English and Linguistics. She also attended linguistics classes at Cambridge University in England. She moved to the United States, in Auburn, Ala., in 1981 where she received her master’s and Ph.D. degrees in comparative drama and Anglo-Saxon/Medieval literature respectively. She taught writing and literature (American, British and World), Women’s Studies and English as Secondary Language (ESL) at the same university for more than 25 years. She lives in Auburn, Ala. with her husband and two daughters. They spend their summers in Greece where she finds inspiration in the beauty of the country, its amazing people and her family and friends. Apart from writing, she is a visual artist (mosaics, woodcarving and mixed media), and a gardener, which is for her another powerful source of beauty.
Regeneration: Made in China * by Effie Piliouni Albrecht
A Meditative Memoir
Publication Date: August 28, 2013
Trade Papaerback; $19.99; 116 pages; 978-1-4836-8414-7
Trade Hardback; $29.99; 116 pages; 978-1-4836-8415-4
eBook; $3.99; # pages; 978-1-4836-8416-1
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