Paper Shadows

"Three weeks before his fifty-seventh birthday, novelist Wayson Choy received a mysterious phone message during his publicity tour for The Jade Peony. When he called the number, an older woman's voice answered, telling him that she had just seen his mother on the streetcar. Wayson politely informed her that his mother had died two decades earlier. "No, no, not your mother," the voice insisted; "your real mother."". "The woman on the phone was right: He had, in fact, been adopted. So, three weeks before his fifty-seventh birthday, Wayson Choy became an orphan.". "This astonishing revelation…