Home is a Roof Over a Pig by Aminta Arrington

An everywoman with courage and acute cultural perspective, Aminta recounts this transformative quest with a freshness that will delight anyone looking for an original, accessible point of view on the new China. A down-to-earth memoir chronicling her family’s stint in the Chinese province of Shandong on the eve of the Beijing Olympics (Publishers Weekly). It will rivet anyone who is thinking of adopting a child, or anyone who is already familiar with the experience. With humor and unexpectedly moving moments, Aminta's story is appealingly reminiscent of Reading Lolita in Tehran.

The family is bewildered by the seemingly endless cultural differences they face, but they find their way. Her creative, independent (and loud) American children chafe in their classrooms, the first rung in society's effort to ensure conformity. Aminta teaches at the university, not realizing she is countering the propaganda the students had memorized for years. In the university town of Tai'an, a small city where pigs' hooves are available at the local supermarket, donkeys share the road with cars, and the warm-hearted locals welcome this strange looking foreign family, the Arringtons settle in. She is also determined that her daughter Grace, born in China, regain some of the culture she lost when the Arringtons brought her to America as a baby. Home is a roof over a pig: an American familys journey in China. Aminta hopes to understand the country with its long civilization, ancient philosophy, and complex language. Her army husband and three young children, including an adopted Chinese daughter, uproot themselves too. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.When all-American Aminta Arrington moves from suburban Georgia to a small town in China, she doesn't go alone. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State-and she would do it alone. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered, and her own marriage was soon destroyed.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest TrailĪt twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. Home is a Roof Over a Pig by Aminta Arrington, 9781468308792, available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide.