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4.25 AVERAGE
4.25 AVERAGE
A beautiful, heartbreaking memoir about an undocumented childhood in America. It is especially powerful and poignant because it tells the author’s story from age 7-12. While some other reviewers didn’t like this, it made the book for me. Rather than being an immigrant “American Dream” story that glosses over the incessant fear and difficulty of being a child, and family, in the shadows — sweatshops, no healthcare, inability to communicate, racial slurs, abject poverty, no safety net — it immerses you in that world. It doesn’t let you escape to the end of the story, and “then I went to Yale and became a successful lawyer,” until you live the heartbreak. How this country treats immigrants is unconscionable. I listened to the audiobook, which is read by the author, and I highly recommend it.
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never thought my first encounter with an undocumented immigrant narrative would be this real and impactful. the fact that qian just took it all in, culminating at the very end where she finally admits that she's tired anchored itself into my soul. although i spent my childhood as a documented native-born foreigner, i can still emphatize with a lot of aspects in her life. growing up in one room with my parents, bouncing from one workplace of theirs to the next, and the emotional tax of it all. she grew up way too fast in a world that demanded her to. emigrating is not easy, especially undocumented immigration, and i hope this book sheds a bit more light onto the realities of the american dream and the sacrifice it takes.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
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medium-paced
Excellent read....heartbreaking at times. I commend her spirit in having written so truthfully her immigration story.
I read this book in two days. Qian Julie Wang captured my heart with her beautifully written memoir of growing up as an undocumented immigrant. I was heartbroken by the racism and disconcern that left her family in dire poverty.
Her parents were educated professionals in China, her mother a math professor and her father an English literature professor. In America, they worked as menial laborers. In China, Qian was a fearless, intelligent, tomboy. In America, her teacher accused her of plagiarism, unable to accept her gift with words.
Qian's father had believed in the myth of American freedom. In China, he was punished for independent thinking. He left his wife and child for America, and it was years before they could join him.
Fear of being discovered kept them caged in poverty. When Qian's mother gains a degree, she can\'t work without proper paperwork.
Qian did not see the 'beautiful' country for a long time. The trauma of her childhood haunted her. When her family relocates to Canada, their lives improve. They were welcome. They had free health care and found appropriate work. Qian received a good education that prepared her for Swarthmore College and Yale Law School.
As a girl, Qian found solace in books. "I read until my loneliness dulled, and I felt myself to be in the good company of all my vibrantly colored, two-dimensional friends. I read until excitement replaced hopelessness," she writes. She bristled when a teacher pushed her to read 'boy' books as more 'worthwhile' than the stories of girl's lives. She found role models such as Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg who taught her that you did not have to be a white male to succeed.
Their family trauma began in China during the Cultural Revolution when her father was a small child who observed his brother arrested, his parents beaten. At school, he was berated and tormented.
"Half a century and a migration across the world later, it would take therapy's slow and arduous unraveling for me to see that the thread of trauma was woven into every fiber of my family, my childhood," Qian writes.
Qian dreams of a day when all people are treated humanely. She writes so others know they are not alone and they can also survive and even flourish.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Her parents were educated professionals in China, her mother a math professor and her father an English literature professor. In America, they worked as menial laborers. In China, Qian was a fearless, intelligent, tomboy. In America, her teacher accused her of plagiarism, unable to accept her gift with words.
Qian's father had believed in the myth of American freedom. In China, he was punished for independent thinking. He left his wife and child for America, and it was years before they could join him.
Fear of being discovered kept them caged in poverty. When Qian's mother gains a degree, she can\'t work without proper paperwork.
Qian did not see the 'beautiful' country for a long time. The trauma of her childhood haunted her. When her family relocates to Canada, their lives improve. They were welcome. They had free health care and found appropriate work. Qian received a good education that prepared her for Swarthmore College and Yale Law School.
As a girl, Qian found solace in books. "I read until my loneliness dulled, and I felt myself to be in the good company of all my vibrantly colored, two-dimensional friends. I read until excitement replaced hopelessness," she writes. She bristled when a teacher pushed her to read 'boy' books as more 'worthwhile' than the stories of girl's lives. She found role models such as Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg who taught her that you did not have to be a white male to succeed.
Their family trauma began in China during the Cultural Revolution when her father was a small child who observed his brother arrested, his parents beaten. At school, he was berated and tormented.
"Half a century and a migration across the world later, it would take therapy's slow and arduous unraveling for me to see that the thread of trauma was woven into every fiber of my family, my childhood," Qian writes.
Qian dreams of a day when all people are treated humanely. She writes so others know they are not alone and they can also survive and even flourish.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
emotional
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informative
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challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
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this story was devastating and moving. i was so deeply touched by this story.
i initially picked this up out of curiosity. i wanted to understand the experience of being an illegal immigrant to more closely understand the experience my mother may have had when she came here and in todays political climate, it felt more important than it ever had. i am so glad i picked this up. i dont think i could ever truly judge this book on a rating scale as it is too personal to judge on 5 star system. the writing was gorgeous and the story will mean more to me than i could ever really express.
i will be recommending this book and i do see myself returning to it for many years to come.
i initially picked this up out of curiosity. i wanted to understand the experience of being an illegal immigrant to more closely understand the experience my mother may have had when she came here and in todays political climate, it felt more important than it ever had. i am so glad i picked this up. i dont think i could ever truly judge this book on a rating scale as it is too personal to judge on 5 star system. the writing was gorgeous and the story will mean more to me than i could ever really express.
i will be recommending this book and i do see myself returning to it for many years to come.
You cannot walk through a bookstore these days without spotting a table of memoirs and I will be the first to say they have rarely called to me as a reader and yet, over these last few years as I have purposefully expanded my reading genre and authorship I have found memoir after memoir loved and recommended and none more so than Qian Julie Wang’s “Beautiful Country.”
In this vulnerable unveiling of life in America as a child living undocumented Wang offers a specific look, feel and American experience that too many of us have ignored, misunderstood or simply believed absent from our country’s reality. Wang offers the world her story, the story of a young girl coming of age in a particular time and circumstance. We witness alongside Wang the struggles her parents endured and the myriad of heartbreaking decisions they wrestled with day in and day out in their personal and public lives. We bear the weight of a daily fear paired with an unstable future that Wang conveys in her young life and we are given a view of American life through the eyes of a young girl doing what all young girls do, grow up.
This memoir came highly recommended to me and I will follow suit and highly recommend it as well. I had the privilege to listen to Wang narrate her memoir through an audio recording which I have found time and time again deeply moving with memoirs, and in this case hearing Wang’s story in her voice made the entire experience of sharing in these words even more poignant and moving. Wang writes with a clarity of purpose while wielding a gripping narrative voice. I am deeply grateful to have consumed this story and to have this glimpse into American life.
In this vulnerable unveiling of life in America as a child living undocumented Wang offers a specific look, feel and American experience that too many of us have ignored, misunderstood or simply believed absent from our country’s reality. Wang offers the world her story, the story of a young girl coming of age in a particular time and circumstance. We witness alongside Wang the struggles her parents endured and the myriad of heartbreaking decisions they wrestled with day in and day out in their personal and public lives. We bear the weight of a daily fear paired with an unstable future that Wang conveys in her young life and we are given a view of American life through the eyes of a young girl doing what all young girls do, grow up.
This memoir came highly recommended to me and I will follow suit and highly recommend it as well. I had the privilege to listen to Wang narrate her memoir through an audio recording which I have found time and time again deeply moving with memoirs, and in this case hearing Wang’s story in her voice made the entire experience of sharing in these words even more poignant and moving. Wang writes with a clarity of purpose while wielding a gripping narrative voice. I am deeply grateful to have consumed this story and to have this glimpse into American life.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
A beautiful, beautiful book. Somewhere in between the childhood memoirs of talented but semi-abusive childhoods and feeling of displacement and never belonging - like "Educated" by Tara Westover and "Crying in H Mart" - is this book. The moving story of a young girl who came from China to NYC with her parents as undocumented immigrants. The (true) ending of her story will leave you paralyzed and likely in tears (though in a good way! Don't want to say more so as not to spoil). Wow - what a book.