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4.25 AVERAGE
4.25 AVERAGE
Affecting, inspiring, and powerful - Qian Julie Wang has written one of the most compelling memoirs I’ve ever read. She shares what it was like for she and her parents to leave a stable and relatively comfortable life in Shijiazhuang, China (her parents were both professors) and to live in hiding and deprivation as undocumented immigrants in New York.
Having arrived in the US when she was only 7-years old, she details the extreme poverty, humiliations, perpetual fear of being found out and deported, self-shrinking, family pressures and suffering they endured. She also describes the small joys, community care, and determination that sustained them during that period.
The fact that Wang taught herself English by reading children’s books, went on to graduate Yale Law School, and became a managing partner at her own firm as well as a published author serves as an inspiration to undocumented immigrants and everyone else. It’s also a reminder to practice compassion and empathy in our daily lives; we may never know what others are battling.
I wish every good thing for ‘Beautiful Country’ and Qian Julie Wang, and I admire the courage and vulnerability it took for her to process and share these parts of her life. Thank you to her, Doubleday/Penguin Random House LLC, and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an advanced reader copy before it’s release next month (9/7/21).
Having arrived in the US when she was only 7-years old, she details the extreme poverty, humiliations, perpetual fear of being found out and deported, self-shrinking, family pressures and suffering they endured. She also describes the small joys, community care, and determination that sustained them during that period.
The fact that Wang taught herself English by reading children’s books, went on to graduate Yale Law School, and became a managing partner at her own firm as well as a published author serves as an inspiration to undocumented immigrants and everyone else. It’s also a reminder to practice compassion and empathy in our daily lives; we may never know what others are battling.
I wish every good thing for ‘Beautiful Country’ and Qian Julie Wang, and I admire the courage and vulnerability it took for her to process and share these parts of her life. Thank you to her, Doubleday/Penguin Random House LLC, and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an advanced reader copy before it’s release next month (9/7/21).
Affecting, inspiring, and powerful - Qian Julie Wang has written one of the most compelling memoirs I’ve ever read. She shares what it was like for she and her parents to leave a stable and relatively comfortable life in Shijiazhuang, China (her parents were both professors) and to live in hiding and deprivation as undocumented immigrants in New York.
Having arrived in the US when she was only 7-years old, she details the extreme poverty, humiliations, perpetual fear of being found out and deported, self-shrinking, family pressures and suffering they endured. She also describes the small joys, community care, and determination that sustained them during that period.
The fact that Wang taught herself English by reading children’s books, went on to graduate Yale Law School, and became a managing partner at her own firm as well as a published author serves as an inspiration to undocumented immigrants and everyone else. It’s also a reminder to practice compassion and empathy in our daily lives; we may never know what others are battling.
I wish every good thing for ‘Beautiful Country’ and Qian Julie Wang, and I admire the courage and vulnerability it took for her to process and share these parts of her life. Thank you to her, Doubleday/Penguin Random House LLC, and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an advanced reader copy before it’s release next month (9/7/21).
Having arrived in the US when she was only 7-years old, she details the extreme poverty, humiliations, perpetual fear of being found out and deported, self-shrinking, family pressures and suffering they endured. She also describes the small joys, community care, and determination that sustained them during that period.
The fact that Wang taught herself English by reading children’s books, went on to graduate Yale Law School, and became a managing partner at her own firm as well as a published author serves as an inspiration to undocumented immigrants and everyone else. It’s also a reminder to practice compassion and empathy in our daily lives; we may never know what others are battling.
I wish every good thing for ‘Beautiful Country’ and Qian Julie Wang, and I admire the courage and vulnerability it took for her to process and share these parts of her life. Thank you to her, Doubleday/Penguin Random House LLC, and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an advanced reader copy before it’s release next month (9/7/21).
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Want to pick back up. Just not the right vibe for me currently.
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Beautifully written, tender and informative, I felt so grateful to have been let into Qian Julie Wang's experience.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
emotional
inspiring
A fairly poignant account of a brief but formative period in author Qian Julie Wang's life, spanning from 1994 when she left China for America with her family at age seven through when they moved again to Canada five years later. This sort of childhood memoir is tricky; although the writer ably captures the feeling of the experience, the details that an adult would know are sometimes absent, and those that we do get can often read as tenuous. For instance, it seems clear that the Wangs immigrated legally and then overstayed their visas, but the text doesn't identify when that change in status would have occurred or distinguish between their documented and undocumented existence. The young girl was taught from the start to avoid cops, not go to licensed doctors, and lie to teachers about where she lived, yet I can't tell how much of that was misguided overprotection as opposed to early good advice.
Similarly, there are sections in here when the parents act in ways that their daughter doesn't understand -- only some of which she appears to grasp better now as a grown-up herself reflecting on the events -- and I'm genuinely unsure as to the intended takeaway. The general impression of poverty is certainly affecting, as is the depiction of witnessing loved ones who were well-off professors back home being forced to endure racist treatment while scrambling for the most menial of jobs in New York. But on a micro level, I think I want more clarity and mature perspective from a work that deliberately sets this narrow a scope.
[Content warning for racial slurs, sexual assault, domestic abuse, and fatphobia.]
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Similarly, there are sections in here when the parents act in ways that their daughter doesn't understand -- only some of which she appears to grasp better now as a grown-up herself reflecting on the events -- and I'm genuinely unsure as to the intended takeaway. The general impression of poverty is certainly affecting, as is the depiction of witnessing loved ones who were well-off professors back home being forced to endure racist treatment while scrambling for the most menial of jobs in New York. But on a micro level, I think I want more clarity and mature perspective from a work that deliberately sets this narrow a scope.
[Content warning for racial slurs, sexual assault, domestic abuse, and fatphobia.]
Like this review?
--Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
--Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
--Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
--Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
A memoir recounting her childhood growing up undocumented on the streets of New York City’s Manhattan Chinatown, Beautiful Country is an all-around unassuming memoir to be read. I fell in love with Wang’s simple prose that she uses to detail memories of her mother and father and their strained relationships as intergenerational trauma weaved itself tightly within their lives.
While Wang was born in China, her father insisted the family move to the United States in search of their “American dream.” This dream was comprised of a shoe-box apartment in various small, decrepit apartment buildings in low-income POC communities. Wang, however, still holds onto fond memories of these spaces, particularly of reading her favorite books in the bathroom—the one place of peace and solace within their home.
I found so many of her experiences to resonate with my own, imagining that the little girl this memoir centers around could’ve been me or, even more so, a friend.
As this isn’t an autobiography, I enjoyed reading about her childhood, up until the point of her and her family entering Canada. It leaves so much left to discover about Wang and the rest of her journey. Bravo.
While Wang was born in China, her father insisted the family move to the United States in search of their “American dream.” This dream was comprised of a shoe-box apartment in various small, decrepit apartment buildings in low-income POC communities. Wang, however, still holds onto fond memories of these spaces, particularly of reading her favorite books in the bathroom—the one place of peace and solace within their home.
I found so many of her experiences to resonate with my own, imagining that the little girl this memoir centers around could’ve been me or, even more so, a friend.
As this isn’t an autobiography, I enjoyed reading about her childhood, up until the point of her and her family entering Canada. It leaves so much left to discover about Wang and the rest of her journey. Bravo.