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himpersonal 's review for:
Beautiful Country
by Qian Julie Wang
emotional
sad
medium-paced
I hope the author has a great therapist. She has been on hyper alert since her earliest childhood, which is something that I think most of us in western culture will never understand. The heightened responsibility children have in many eastern countries is common, partially because we are entrusted to handle it, partially because we rely on the whole family unit for support (vs paying nannies, for example), and partially because filial piety is still a strong cultural driving force, among other reasons. Those children, that culture, once planted in the North American soil has nowhere to grow except as trauma. What's normal in Asia can only be abnormal here. The cultural values are too different to synthesize. There, the good of the collective is prioritized over the happiness of the individual. It's the opposite here. So when children look out for the wellbeing of their parents, it looks unfair and unduly burdensome. We are told and judged by therapists and authority figures and non-immigrant families that our family dynamics are messed up and that we are not responsible for the emotional health of our parents. Then we end up confused and the culture clash continues to tear and tug at our identity. I believe that's what's happened to the author.
It's also clear that her parents have their own inherited traumas, especially her father - some of it was environmental and some stemmed from the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Add to this the poverty and challenges to survive as immigrants, the racism and xenophobia directed at them, the constant fear of deportation, marginalization as the invisible model minority, and the constant disgusting fetishized western male gaze, and this book is born. It's her unique story, and it's the same story of millions of Asian immigrants, particularly Chinese immigrants (the Chinese Cultural Revolution happened to them, though many of our other countries have suffered political unrest and war as well in our "recent" histories). It's like she speaks for all of us in many ways. By giving voice to her life, it brings into the open the ugly truth of what it means when the Statue of Liberty says to bring her the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. And it lets us start harmonizing our lives in a way that makes sense - neither assimilating nor acclimating, per se, but building something new and uniquely ours. This was the advice my mother gave me at age 9 - to take the best of both my cultures and to create something new for me. I've been doing it ever since. I hope that by writing this book, the author is finding was to do this for herself too. This is not a book for the readers but a book for her personal actualization, to make sense of her past so that her future can be unfettered.
My friend is learning Chinese. She says the US is literally translated as "Beautiful Country." Guessing someone who thought the streets were paved with gold gave us this name. It was a common myth back then. My mother even admitted that a small part of her was disappointed to see the plane land at SeaTac on macadam instead of gold.
Rounding up to 4.
It's also clear that her parents have their own inherited traumas, especially her father - some of it was environmental and some stemmed from the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Add to this the poverty and challenges to survive as immigrants, the racism and xenophobia directed at them, the constant fear of deportation, marginalization as the invisible model minority, and the constant disgusting fetishized western male gaze, and this book is born. It's her unique story, and it's the same story of millions of Asian immigrants, particularly Chinese immigrants (the Chinese Cultural Revolution happened to them, though many of our other countries have suffered political unrest and war as well in our "recent" histories). It's like she speaks for all of us in many ways. By giving voice to her life, it brings into the open the ugly truth of what it means when the Statue of Liberty says to bring her the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. And it lets us start harmonizing our lives in a way that makes sense - neither assimilating nor acclimating, per se, but building something new and uniquely ours. This was the advice my mother gave me at age 9 - to take the best of both my cultures and to create something new for me. I've been doing it ever since. I hope that by writing this book, the author is finding was to do this for herself too. This is not a book for the readers but a book for her personal actualization, to make sense of her past so that her future can be unfettered.
My friend is learning Chinese. She says the US is literally translated as "Beautiful Country." Guessing someone who thought the streets were paved with gold gave us this name. It was a common myth back then. My mother even admitted that a small part of her was disappointed to see the plane land at SeaTac on macadam instead of gold.
Rounding up to 4.