The first half of the novel establishes Grace as an average Canadian girl and the Parkers as a loving and supportive family: it is the strength of her sense of belonging to this family that allows her to explore her Chinese identity. But "Grace" and her adoptive family retreat from the centre stage in the second half of the novel as "Dong-Mei" comes forward: snippets of Communist party policy, Chinese tradition, family history and political turmoil come together to construct the circumstances of Dong-Mei's birth and adoption. The end of her quest is to forge a reconciliation with her ancestry, and, through understanding, to forgive her mother for abandoning her.

Growing up in Canada, Grace is at best incurious, and at worst scathing, about the country of her birth, and she resents her adoptive mother's insistence that she remember her roots. In adolescence, however, world events and social issues start to have more impact on her. Chapters containing snapshots — the Tiananmen Square massacre, a televised debate on racism — prepare the way for Grace's admission that she feels like "two people at the same time".

Her initial motivation for tracking down her family is to blame them for what they did to her, but her story is both a cultural exploration and a process of maturation. Her search leads her to the understanding that she too, like the missing female population in modern China lamented by her half-brother Ah-Miao, is a lost jigsaw piece. Her mother's life has been bereft not knowing what became of her.

Grace learns tolerance and opens her mind to a new culture, which, like the nightmarish dish "still-alive fish" offered to her as a special treat, is often hard to swallow. The horrors of China's twentieth century history are not glossed over, nor is her father's family presented in an attractive light, but as Grace accepts a lift from Ah-Miao, representative of the new rural China, there appears to be a hint of acceptance and even the possibility of forgiveness of the family.

It is a tale of culture clash: both because her protagonist is a teenager who uses words like "shit" a lot and "mouths off," and because the author is herself Chinese, Ting-Xing Ye gets away with strong negative comments about China. Grace's reactions are often outspoken: she wanted to boot the little boy in the Shanghai restaurant "in his fat little ass." Her Chinese roots "could wither in hell." At other times, she says nothing, but the authorial position is still clear: the conversation with Ms. Song's daughter sets Chinese submissive daughter up against Western independent girl: although she doesn't comment, we can sense Grace's embarrassment as Ms. Song asks her to help get the daughter into a Canadian college, while the daughter's viewpoint is ignored.

The author allows the different characters to speak for themselves, but the result is that we often find little to sympathise with. Like Grace, the writer doesn't always succeed in not taking sides. Grace's Canadian family retain their wholesome, righteous image while her Chinese family is, even having heard about their difficulties, hard to like.

The story reads like a journal or a documentary rather than a novel — many characters, such as Ms. Song, are introduced in order to give information about China, while character vignettes, such as the little boy in the Shanghai restaurant, seem to be there to show us stereotypes of the modern country. It is a blatantly informative book. There are much more skilfully written works around for young adults, but the strength of Throwaway Daughter is its topicality. It should be read for content rather than style.

Despite these reservations, it is an interesting, informative and accessible book for teenagers — one that can help them give twentieth century Chinese history a human face. It is a good book to use in schools to explore cultural issues, specifically the theme of cross-cultural adoption.

Christine Bruce teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the Faculty of Education. She works with teachers of ESL and promotes the teaching of English through literature.