One Child

First-time mother and filmmaker Nanfu Wang uncovers the untold history of China's One-Child policy and the generations of parents and children forever shaped by this social experiment.

China’s one-child policy, the extreme population control measure that made it illegal for couples to have more than one child, may have ended in 2015, but the process of dealing with the trauma of its brutal enforcement is only just beginning. From award-winning documentarian Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, One Child Nation explores the ripple effects of this devastating social experiment, uncovering one shocking human rights violation after another — from abandoned newborns (almost always girls), to forced sterilizations and abortions to government abductions.

This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games–games that left him nearly dead.

Six-year-old Sheila never spoke, she never cried, and her eyes were filled with hate. Abandoned on a highway by her mother, unwanted by her alcoholic father, Sheila was placed in a class for emotionally disturbed children after she committed an atrocious act of violence against another child.