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4.25 AVERAGE
4.25 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang is a memoir told through the eyes of a child as her family struggles to survive in America. In China, Qian’s parents were well educated and respected professors. Qian’s parents do not agree with the Chinese political system and wishing for a better life come to America on visitor Visas. Overstaying their Visas, the family remain in America as undocumented Chinese living in constant fear. They remain in the shadows of NYC to avoid being discovered, arrested and deported back to China. Working menial low paying jobs for long hours and little pay, the family is barely able to exist. They live in inadequate housing sharing a bathroom and kitchen with other desperate families. There is little food and “shopping days” are their only means of acquiring clothing and everyday household items. The Wang family’s fears, stresses, struggles and desperation is a story of people trying to find a better world for themselves and their families and the means by which they are willing to go to achieve that life.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Beautifully written!
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
Spoiler review - Depressingly honest. Qian Julie Wang tells of her childhood of deprivation in America. She starts the book insisting that her parents were once loving and good because, after her father forced them to flee China undocumented, they fail her repeatedly. She’s neglected and often endangered in NYC but the “da ren” are too busy w their own suffering and fear of deportation to intervene. The memoir is told from Qian’s perspective from the ages of 7 to 12 years. She learns English from books like “Charlottes Web” and “Babysitter’s Club” and then serves as translator for her mother. They’re exploited in sweatshops and endure starvation and prejudice. The passages about her cat Marilyn were particularly harrowing as her father was abusive to the poor creature and she eventually adopts his superstition and cruelty after he convinces her that the cat’s asymmetry brought bad luck and ruined her mother’s recovery from surgery. Things only start to look up in the final chapters as Qian first applies to a gifted program against her father’s wishes. Then her mother finally takes matters in hand and moves them to Canada where they have a path toward legality. The most poignant part of the book comes at the end when adult Qian struggles to integrate the shame and misery of those 5 years w the successful US-educated lawyer she’d become
hopeful
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Qian’s shared at the start of this book that while everyone’s story is different, “the heartbreak of one immigrant is never far from another”. Having worked in immigration for over a decade, I have heard many stories, Qian’s felt as real as if she told me it over coffee. You get a sense of her personality and deepest emotions. You laugh, cringe, and cry with her. This is a lovely memoir. Needed in a time such as this one.
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Reminded me of the childhood poverty and seemingly endless struggles of Angela’s Ashes. Shows what happens when you keep people out of the system and the abuse they become subject to, all from the perspective of a child.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced