"Lucky Girl" author talks about being one of the first Chinese babies Adopted in U.S.

TAYLOR, Mich. (WXYZ) - Mei-Ling Hopgood said looking back years later, her reunion with her birth family from Taiwan felt like it was something from a movie.

"Absolutely! The whole time," she recalled.

"The experience alters your reality.  My reality was here with my family.  And suddenly you find out there's this whole other family, this whole other life, this whole other fate that you could have had."

Hopgood was less than a year old when Rollie and Chris Hopgood adopted her from a poor family in Taiwan.

She grew up in Taylor, Michigan, with two Korean brothers the Hopgoods also adopted.

Mei-Ling Hopgood's birth family tracked her down when the budding newspaper journalist was 23.

"The first reunion was so joyful.  We were so tearful and happy we were reunited.  But underneath all of that, there were a lot of complex stories," she explained.

The emotional, ten-year, get-to-know-you journey that followed is the mind-blowing tale in her memoir Lucky Girl.  It was published in 2009 in hardback and recently released in paperback.

"I cry every time I read it," said her adopted mother Chris Hopgood.  "It was a good kind of bittersweet thing."

Her brothers also enjoyed reading the story, and they are very proud of her.

"I think it's full of stories about how you can overcome a lot of the difficulties that people face, and how stories change us as time goes on," said Jung-Hoe Hopgood -- the youngest of the three adopted siblings.

Hoon-Yung Hopgood was impressed with how her reunion played out.

"Just the thought process that went through her mind and this whole new experience and world that was opening up to her," he said.

Mei-Ling is now raising a daughter with her husband -- fellow author Monte Reel.  They live in Argentina.

But you can meet them tonight, July 8th.

They will both be talking about their books and what it is like to be married to an author.

You can meet them at 7:00 p.m. at Book Beat, 26010 Greenfield in Oak Park.