Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Beautiful Country

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

5 reviews

shortstackz's review against another edition

emotional sad slow-paced

3.5

This is a tough read for anyone who has experienced childhood food insecurity. Qian has a very lyrical writing style, leaving the reader to infer a lot about the inner lives of her parents throughout the story. It centers around the years where they were undocumented in the US, and I wish she delved more into the aftermath and unpacking of it. The lart chapter is a sprint through her adulthood, I would have liked to see how her life in Canada further contrasted against her Chinese and American lives. Particularly as she focused on her mother's journey throughout the memoir. It's easy to forget the political context of their move, especially when you see the glaring mysogyny of the father. A tough family dynamic between all involved, and a family struggling to find safe haven.

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parasolcrafter's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense medium-paced

5.0

it always feels so odd to me, in some way, to talk about and rate memoirs because its somebodys life that youre, in essence, putting a number value on, so rather than try and do that ill just say that i loved the way Qian spoke about her life in the most intimate way that somebody can do; giving us the bad times, the good times, the scary times, and the times that maybe didnt paint her in the best light.

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erebus53's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

I really don't know if I would have been able to manage this memoire without listening to the Audiobook, deftly narrated by the author. Being self-narrated it dodged a lot of messy casting issues such as having a reader who could not pronounce Chinese. I'm thankful for that.

Beautiful Country is a direct translation of the Chinese term for USA 美国 - Mĕiguó . Whenever I hear " Mĕiguó " spoken, I picture the characters in my mind. A year working at a Chinese Newspaper will do that to a nerdy lass who likes languages. I have always been struck by how ironic the name is. The memoire written is an awakening from a childhood where the author needs to protect herself over and again, from the perils of being an "illegal" migrant. When any false word could get you deported, you learn to say what people want to hear.

From sweat shops, and bigoted teachers, buying the cheapest food possible, and making do with forgaed treasures, this is a candid story of poverty, Racism, and survival. I found the descriptions reminded me of many things that have been part of my life, and drew stark contrast between some of my own experiences as a White New Zealander ( Pākeha ) living in a country with social security.

I expect that some of this recounting may be affronting to those who are unaware of the type of life that oppressed people can easily fall into. The story is that of someone who has survived, but doesn't really feel as saccharine as a lot of inspiration stories can be.

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unsuccessfulbookclub's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

Books are magic in that they can really get you behind someone else’s eyes, and Qian Julie Wang did something so special with this book, not only sharing her experiences but sharing them through her own eyes as a child.

Every story in this book feels so real and immediate. I felt hungry, cold, confused, happy, tired, sad, lonely, elated, scared, angry and all of the other emotions right along with her as she related every detail. I remembered being 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, loving visits to the library, hating trying to fit in at school and dealing with learning how my (very small, very privileged) life worked.

Reading this story, which is simultaneously incredibly relatable and incredibly different from my own, hit me like a ton of bricks. When I closed the book I felt hopeful but also so frustrated by Qian’s experiences. When I feel like that, it helps me to think about what actions I can take to help ensure that no more little girls have to experience hunger, discrimination and hatred at the level that Qian did, so I made a little list for myself:

I will advocate for free lunch and summer food programs through my local public school system and vote for school board candidates who share my views.
I will call my legislators and urge them to create long-term, easier ways for young children of undocumented immigrants to achieve citizenship.
I will continue to avoid fast fashion and invest in clothing and other goods made by people who are earning a living wage.

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ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

“Well, isn’t it nice to know, Qian Qian, that we’re not alone?” But I didn’t think it was nice at all. It didn’t seem right that there were many more people out there feeling alone and homesick and hungry in the same moments when we were feeling those things. Hundreds of lonely people, I figured, was far worse than three lonely people.”

TITLE—Beautiful Country

AUTHOR—Qian Julie Wang

PUBLISHED—September 2021

GENRE—memoir, nonfiction

SETTING—the story begins in China and continues in America (in 1994, when the MC moves to the US, she is 7 years old)

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—immigration, undocumented immigrant experience, Chinese-American identity, fear, poverty, oppression, corruption, exploitation, trauma, family, community, coming of age

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️

“I did not need to turn to Ba Ba to know that he would have no questions. He asked fewer and fewer questions in America. Somehow, by leaving China, Ba Ba had grown more Chinese, starting to adopt our government’s silly ideas about how asking questions was bad and disrespectful. He took on the form of what America expected of us: docile, meek. He had even started teaching me the importance of keeping my head down, of not asking any questions or drawing any attention, seemingly forgetting that he had taught me the exact opposite in China.”

There are an infinite number of individuals differing perspectives and life experiences and reading is a great way to expose yourself to as many of them as possible and this book certainly did that for me. This book taught me a lot and I’m so glad I got the chance to read it. ❤️

A couple observations:

I couldn’t get over the fact that the author and I are the same age. So while she was describing what her life was like as a seven-year-old, in the same country, at the same time, as I was growing up as a seven-year-old… it was really surreal. Especially when she and I actually had a lot of similar life experiences (due to both of our family’s extreme poverty, obviously not bc I have any idea what it’s like to be an undocumented immigrant) but her story about the hello kitty pencil, the polly pockets, and the tamagotchi, and her experiences at school with lunch vouchers and becoming a bully in order to compensate for her lack of self esteem due to the traumas of poverty in her friend group, and her experience of the public library as a huge sanctuary… There was so much I related to on such a deep level! 😅

I was a little confused about how I was supposed to feel about the fact that the author seemed to feel that NYC was her “real” home, and she ended up falling in love with NYC/America (where she attended college and eventually lived permanently), when she and her family had ended up needing to move to Canada in order to be safe… I wish I could have gotten a bit more clarity on why this was from the book… perhaps it was there and I missed it.

“Ma Ma turned to me and instructed, “Bie shuo hua.” She would say this more and more to me during our time to come in Mei Guo. Be silent. Say nothing. My voice no longer had a place.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // trauma, poverty, animal death, suicidal thoughts, sexual harassment, animal cruelty, vomit

Further Reading—

Zami, by Audre Lorde
To Hair and Back, by Rhonda Eason
The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio—TBR

Favorite Quotes…

“The Chinese refer to being undocumented colloquially as “hei”: being in the dark, being blacked out. And aptly so, because we spent those years shrouded in darkness while wrestling with hope and dignity.”

“Ba Ba had left for Mei Guo, America, two years earlier, and Ma Ma had been trying to get a visitor’s visa for almost a year. Four times, Ma Ma left our home and traveled hours away to Beijing, where the embassy for Mei Guo, a name that translated literally into “Beautiful Country,” kept telling her no.”

“All I remember is getting the blood test results and finding out that my blood was not Type A, but rather what I knew, from the order of the English alphabet, to be the inferior Type B. My face drooped and I shared my dismay with Ma Ma, who laughed and laughed and said not to worry—she was Type B, too. This did not reassure me at all. It told me only that my inferiority was coded into my blood and my genes.”

“The white characters had darker yellow skin and the Chinese characters had lighter yellow skin. I knew they were supposed to be Chinese because they had eyes that were thinner, elongated, and slanted. I had no idea before then that Chinese eyes were supposed to look like that, but it quickly became how I saw myself, teaching me then that there was something wrong with my eyes.”

“We didn’t eat much in the kitchen, but I spent a lot of time there anyway. At night, long after all of the tenants had eaten their last meals and had returned to their one-room apartments, I snuck back. I liked to cower under the light switch and listen to the tap-tap-taps against the wood-like walls across the entire kitchen. Counting to an arbitrary number in silence—sometimes ten, sometimes two—I stayed crouched but reached up and flicked the light switch as quickly as I could. I then watched the walls as they receded in color from dark brown to tan as the cockroaches that papered them in darkness retreated to their lairs. As soon as the walls regained their full tan color, I flicked the switch back down again, waiting and listening as a single tap emerged, then another, and then another, a new chorus crescendoing. And then, as with mother hen, the game would start anew.”

This is one of the most morbid things I've ever read :-|

“He would happily eat America’s shit before feasting on China’s fruits.”

“…so long as we didn’t stake claim to what wasn’t ours—the things, our rooms, America, this beautiful country—we would be okay.”

“Why should I have to change what I was called just because their tongues were too clumsy?”

“Money, I thought, protected people from everything. In China, we had money and no problems. In America, we had no money and only problems. Money was the cure.”

“I became a habitual liar. Alternate lives spewed out of my mouth before circuiting my brain. I started small but soon advanced to bigger, more extravagant creations.”

“Did you know that there are many sweatshops in Chinatown?” Most of our parents worked in one. “Most of your parents are uneducated. They can only work in sweatshops.” That wasn’t the reason.”

“The problem, Ma Ma explained, was that his childhood left in him a fear so big that it eclipsed everything, even the people he loved most. Especially the people he loved most.”

“Try to understand her instead of judging her, Qian Qian,” Ma Ma had said. “You are luckier than her because you know you are worth more than that.”

“It was then that I realized I could be homesick for a place even though I no longer knew where home was.”

“Wo zai zhe li sheng de. Wo yi zhi jiu zai Mei Guo. I was born here. I’ve always lived in America.”

“Will we be locked up?” “Don’t worry, Qian Qian.” But what do I have but worry, after all this time?”

“…apparently free and safe, but really behind bars wrought from trauma.”

From the Acknowledgements: “It takes a certain level of foolishness to build your first book around your deepest childhood traumas.”

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