Transmedia Story Full Launch!

Melissa Ludtke and I have just launched the website for our transmedia series Touching Home in China: in search of missing girlhoods.

Now we add a website - functional on desktop and mobile - to the project's presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and iBooks. Our launch coincides with the 20th anniversary of Hillary Clinton's declaration that "women's rights are human rights once and for all" at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

The project explores girlhood in 21st century rural China through the eyes of two Chinese-American adoptees and the girls they meet in their "hometowns." The first of six stories has been uploaded, and the remaining installments will come over the next few months.

I have learned a lot about this new medium through our collaboration, and am excited to add more stories!

Story 2: Touching Home

Melissa Ludtke and I are so excited to launch iBook story 2, Touching Home, in our transmedia series Touching Home in China: in search of missing girlhoods. 

These stories anchor our project’s global social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and our website.

In this story, two American adoptees meet girls who grew up in the rural towns where they were abandoned as babies. The Chinese and American girls discover kinship in their shared beginnings and set out to explore differences of experience and attitude that their distant childhoods created. Videos, photo galleries, interactive graphics, and audio narrations bring the girls’ blossoming friendships to life – and enable viewers to glimpse life as a girl in 21st century rural China.

The iBooks series Touching Home in China: in search of missing girlhoods anchors a transmedia project on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and a narrative website. At the heart of the story are two American adoptees who return as teens to the towns in China where each was abandoned as a newborn. There, they meet girls who grew up in these towns and learn about what their own girlhoods might have been like in 21st century rural China.  The girls open a fascinating cross-cultural dialogue about family life, school, work, and their aspirations. The project’s social media platforms engage a global audience with interactive news and commentary about girls and women’s lives in contemporary China.

The Touching Home story is available for purchase for $3.99 on iPads, iPhones, and Macs here.