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4.25 AVERAGE
4.25 AVERAGE
Beautiful Country is perhaps a memoir written too soon. While the author has a worthwhile story to tell, it seems to lack reflection. It reads almost like a laundry list of all the awful things that have happened to her. There is no rising action or direction. There is simply her experience with each chapter capable of being a single story unto itself, plucked from her memory on any given day.
The last chapter grants some relief when the author's voice finally breaks through to lend perspective to what she has shared. The perspective is honest, strong, and full. However, we miss so much of the actual process of reflection and learning. She tells us, but doesn't show us how she arrived at now; thus the reader misses out on the best part of a memoir: learning how to grow by seeing someone else's growth process.
Qiang Julie Wang tells us so little about her actual growth process and focuses so heavily on her pre high school years that the memoir is more like a diary. Qian Julie Wang does not write for the reader, she's writing largely for herself. She writes to find relief and rest, but not because she has something to say. She writes to unburden the secret of her immigration status, of her homelife, of her childhood.
The last chapter grants some relief when the author's voice finally breaks through to lend perspective to what she has shared. The perspective is honest, strong, and full. However, we miss so much of the actual process of reflection and learning. She tells us, but doesn't show us how she arrived at now; thus the reader misses out on the best part of a memoir: learning how to grow by seeing someone else's growth process.
Qiang Julie Wang tells us so little about her actual growth process and focuses so heavily on her pre high school years that the memoir is more like a diary. Qian Julie Wang does not write for the reader, she's writing largely for herself. She writes to find relief and rest, but not because she has something to say. She writes to unburden the secret of her immigration status, of her homelife, of her childhood.
A good memoir revealing the life of a Chinese immigrant s she pursues her version of the American dream.
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Touching, illuminating. Rich writing - I often felt like I was standing next to the author witnessing her experiences first hand. Such a moving story that reminds me to be a better, more understanding person to those around me…we never know what others are going through.
Beautiful writing, but the description got me bogged down at times. Also, this story ends when she is in 6th grade and then ________. There is a lot more to the story, and not all as challenging and negative as her early years were, we just never learn about them.
Audiobook. The story would be an interesting one, but it is put together in such a way that it is a compilation of many, many tiny details from her childhood, with very little added perspective or overarching view from her adult self. DNFed about half way through when I saw from other reviews that the book only spans until she turns 12 and they move to Canada. I would have liked to hear more of her life so far, experiences in Canada, getting in to University, what life is like now/how her adult life is shaped by these childhood experiences, but that is not the book she wrote. This is a detailed cataloging of childhood memories.
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Racial slurs, Racism, Medical content, Classism, Deportation
A wonderful memoir about immigrant life here in the United States that is more current than most. Really gives you something to think about when it comes to how the US, aka people, treat members of the human race.