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lesserjoke 's review for:
Beautiful Country
by Qian Julie Wang
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