If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother

Julia Sweeney was nearing forty, and quite famous, when she got on a flight to China to turn her life upside down. She had a flourishing career as a comedienne and performer, ample friends and admirers, but what she didn't have was a child and, after a string of non-committal boyfriends, she decided to adopt alone. Mulan was one-and-a-half years old when she met her new mother, and every bit as feisty as the Disney character (whom she was emphatically not named for). If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother is the story of this unexpected mother-daughter pair who eventually became - to Julia's astonishment and in a hilariously unconventional way - a mother-daughter-father trio. From being mistaken for her daughter's grandmother to her tragically short-lived belief that knitting a man a sweater will make him commit to you, Julia's memoir is at once hilarious, poignant, provocative and wise. It is a story of adoption, Hollywood, dogs, death, marriage, Santa Claus, race and religion, the birds, the bees (and the frogs...) and everything else along the way.