Beautiful Country By Qian Julie Wang
Audiobook….read by Qian Julie Wang
….9 hours and 38 minutes
Fear, hunger, loneliness, sadness, anger, worry, shame, and exhaustion were feelings our protagonist lived with as a child ‘coming-of-age’ ….in America.
I’m sorry for the fearful painful childhood Qian had…
Seven-year Qian not only looked and felt different from others - but she often felt unworthy and invisible.
Very sad - Qian had to find ways to work this out for herself over time …
Looking back … through the eyes of a child….
we learn of the bleak-grueling horrors associated with undocumented life in America:
….new language, unfamiliar culture, financial struggles, menial jobs, daily living hardships, and risks taken to survive.
Qian Julie Wang also shared the joy of eating pizza for the first time and other cute/humorous tales…while envisioning a more incandescent future….
(Goals accomplished:
Wang is a graduate of Yale Law School and Swarthmore College…..and is a civil rights litigator today)
But mostly it was the hardships that were examined in this memoir.
Qian exposes the many cracks in the American dream.
Nothing wrong with this book -it’s Wang’s memoir…
Many daunting tales… authentic storytelling…
but
from a reader who has read dozens of immigrant stories….”The Sympathizer”, by Viet Thanh Nguyen,
“Crying in H Mark” by Michelle Zauner, “Interior Chinatown”, by Charles Yu,
“Pachinko”, by Min Jin Lee, etc.
I wasn’t shocked or awakened about the taut, fierce, tragedies —
Emotionally….I felt neutral —
I listened to Qian’s childhood experiences -(passively)-
and to her parent’s
hardships. I took it in —
listened with ‘interest enough’ - but my emotions were naturally restrained.
I appreciate the depictions of memory that were written….
Qian held onto love and forgiveness regarding her parents choices —She demonstrated her own resilience…and examined the realities of being an undocumented immigrant in America with unflinching precision.
But that close connection between the written words and my own invested feelings were a little off.
When it comes to undocumented immigration…unsettling times live on. 320 I’m quite picky when it comes to memoirs and tend to gravitate towards those where I am able to either relate to the experiences of the author or connect with them in some way. While there are a plethora of memoirs out there, the reality is that very few of those memoirs are actually written from the perspective of someone who shares a similar background as myself — namely, a Chinese-American woman from an immigrant family who has struggled with identity and belonging her entire life. This is why, when I found out about Qian Julie Wang’s memoir Beautiful Country, I knew I absolutely had to pick this one up. This powerful memoir is exactly one of those rare gems that most closely encapsulates the immigrant experience that I grew up with. Though there are obvious differences between our circumstances in terms of how are families came to America (the titular “beautiful country” as directly translated from Chinese) — for example, my family immigrated here legally while Wang’s family ended up here illegally due to an expired visa — many of the struggles that Wang recounts from her childhood are ones that I’ve also experienced.
Wang tells her story starting from the perspective of her seven-year-old self, when she is told to put her most prized possessions into her grandparents’ storage unit in China so she could accompany her mother on a “flying machine” (literal translation of 飛機 or “airplane”) that eventually lands in a place called “beautiful country” (literal translation of 美國 or “America”). From the moment Wang and her mother step off the plane at JFK airport (New York) and are reunited with her father (who had gone to America two years earlier), her life is forever changed in ways that eventually shape who she becomes in adulthood. Though she didn’t know it at the time, leaving China for America meant that Wang would go from an environment where she was surrounded by extended family, unconditional love, and every comfort possible, to one where loneliness was a constant companion, familial love came with strings attached, and every day was a fight for survival at all levels (physically, mentally, emotionally). We witness Wang’s coming of age through the wide-eyed lens of a child forced to navigate a world she does not understand and where she was taught to put her head down, do as she was told, and endure whatever was thrown her way without complaint because that was the expectation of someone in her situation.
While in China, Wang’s parents were highly educated professionals, in America they were reduced to working in sweatshops and other low-paying jobs that allowed them to remain in the shadows, with the constant fear of their illegal status being discovered hanging over them. The stress of their new life in a foreign country where, despite their efforts to remain invisible, they are still largely unwelcomed, takes a toll on Wang’s parents and eventually leads to the fracturing of their family. Illegal status aside though, Wang’s struggles growing up as an immigrant child resonated deeply with me — from the humiliation of a tenuous living situation where there was little to no privacy, to not being able to afford the most basic of comforts that seemed to come easily to everyone else (ie: enough food for the table, a roof over our heads, clean clothes to wear to school); to being constantly told that, no matter how hard you work to fit in or how much you contribute to your community, you will never truly belong; to the bullying and racism, both subtle and direct, that becomes an inevitable part of the immigrant experience. For me, this book was difficult to read — not because of challenging subject matter or anything like that — but because of the familiarity of Wang’s experiences and the memories they brought back of my own childhood. One experience in particular had me near tears when I read it: the scene where, in fifth grade, Wang is summoned to her (white male) teacher’s desk one day and, shown an essay she had written and submitted, is essentially accused of plagiarism because the essay was “too well written” and the English was “too good” to have been written by her. Even though she told her teacher that she truly did write the essay and didn’t plagiarize, her status meant that she was not to be believed, so after that incident, Wang would deliberately include spelling and grammatical errors in all her essays to avoid having to endure a similar confrontation with her teacher in the future. This scene resonated with me in particular because this was a common experience for me throughout my entire elementary and middle school education: being told that something I wrote couldn’t possibly have been written by me because the English was “too good” and that I must have copied it from elsewhere. As a result, I also started deliberately including “errors” in my writing to avoid confrontation. Luckily, I later attended a high school and college that embraced diversity and eventually recognized my efforts (though the shaken confidence in how I view my writing is something that I still carry with me to this day).
This was truly a profound and emotional read for me, one that I know will stay with me for a long time to come. Even though reading this memoir brought back some unhappy memories for me, I appreciate the fact that a book like this one exists. While I am buoyed by the knowledge that our country has come a long way in terms of racial diversity and acceptance, at the same time, I am saddened by the obvious steps backwards that we as a society have also taken in this area, over the past few years especially. Now more than ever, we need books like this one that can hopefully help open people’s eyes to the plight that so many in our society experience — a timely read that I absolutely recommend!
Received ARC from Doubleday Books via Edelweiss.
320 The majority of this novel is about Qian Julie Wang’s childhood from age 7 through 6th grade. There is some background on the family at the beginning and then author’s notes at the end to complete the story.
I have read a lot of books about immigrants but each one is unique. Many immigrants have come from impoverished countries, having always been poor and are looking for a better life in the United States.
Ms. Wang however, grew up in a childhood that was filled with love, friends, her own room and toys to play with. Her mother was a math professor and her father an English professor. Things were changing for them. Where once they were a thriving family with a good income and a nice home, they were now being watched constantly. Her father “did not like that they were told what to say, and that they could not answer when students asked about something called the Cultural Revolution”. They decided he would come to “Mei Guo”, the beautiful country and would then send for his wife and daughter.
Ba Ba had not warned Ma Ma or Qian about the conditions he was living in. Where once they were professors, now they were working menial jobs under terrible conditions. They shared a tiny apartment that was dirty, with very little to call their own.
Qian quickly learned that they were “different” than other people here, even those that looked like her. They spoke a different language and their food was different. She was told to always say that she was born here, for fear of deportation as they were undocumented immigrants.
In many ways her story is that of so many other immigrants. Qian and her parents never gave up hope and Qian was determined to go to college and beyond.
As I read the memoir I did feel emotional. No one should have to live a life of poverty, little food and terrible living conditions.
Yet in spite of all of these hardships, the author still chose to return to the US for law school and continues to call New York home. She also credits the city library for allowing her to immerse herself in the language and even the culture of the US.
I received an ARC of this memoir from the publisher through NetGalley. 320 I’ve read a few immigrant stories in my day, but none so vividly captured the contemporary experience of moving to my “beautiful country,” America, through the eyes of a child as did Qian Julie Wang’s 2021 memoir.
Qian and her parents moved to New York’s Chinatown in 1994 and had to rebuild their life amidst sweatshop employment conditions and disgusting tenement living quarters. Since she’s just a child under 10, she’s slightly more adept at acclimating to the US way of life than her parents. Learning the new language comes a bit easier to her, but that doesn’t save her from the poverty, racism, and overall hardships.
The thing that struck me most about “Beautiful Country” is how razor-focused Qian’s childhood memories are. She writes of her youth as an illegal immigrant with the innocence of a young girl, as opposed to filtering it through a lens of an adult who has lived and learned and is now looking back. The result is a memoir that feels relatable even if you have nothing in common with her circumstance other than the shared experience of being a child. Can’t we all relate to trying to make sense of the world when we were kids?
Beautiful Country is now available and was the Today Show / Read with Jenna book club pick for September, 2021.
Blog: https://www.confettibookshelf.com/ 320 Ugly memoir...
I think reading memoirs is an amazing way to develop empathy and learn about different cultures and life experiences. Crying in H Mart and Aftershocks are two prime examples of excellent memoirs that will teach you about culture through the lens of young women.
I was hoping Beautiful Country would bring the same level of insight, sadness and reflection, but unfortunately it was a huge miss for me.
Here are my critiques:
Wang only writes about her life until she’s in the sixth grade. The last chapter is an insanely quick summary of her life after she was a tween. I’m sorry but a memoir doesn’t end at 12 years-old.
It’s a lot of the same sad story. Her parents moved from China to NYC when Wang was very young and the majority of her childhood recount is working in sweatshops, starving and reading books in the bathroom. While it is a heartbreaking story it doesn’t really evolve out of a few narratives. Half of the book is about how Wang’s parents didn’t feed her properly and her dreaming about the food she would like to eat.
At the end of the novel, and in Wang’s tweens, they move to Canada because they had enough of how the U.S. treated undocument immigrants. Canada welcomes them with open arms and Wang just glosses over this. There is no detail of her time here. She just focused the whole book on her negative experiences in NYC.
Wang does become a successful lawyer but you wouldn’t know it because she doesn’t write it! I had to find out in an interview AND she moved back to NYC! This annoys me to no end being a Canadian, so many people (primarily in entertainment) dump Canada for its sexier neighbour.
I wanted to hear her success story, whether she attributes her life now to America, Canada or even herself. I want the full story and I felt cheated by the end of this.
It’s definitely a book that could spark some interesting book club conversations because you can’t avoid discussing U.S. immigration.
320
**Many thanks to NetGalley, Doubleday and Qian Julie Wang for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 9.7, and now in paperback!**
On that run, only one thing kept pace with me, and it was not hunger. It was fear. Fear was all I tasted; fear was all I contained; fear was all I was.
Young Qian Qian travels to New York City with her Ma Ma and Ba Ba, far from their success and comfort in China to seek a better life in Mei Guo (The Beautiful Country). Like so many, however, their journey to America not only fails to give them the life they had before, but actually turns the tide for the worse. Qian's parents are both intelligent, professors in their own right: and yet, all America can afford them are the dark and dank confines of sweatshops and other menial labor, where Qian herself is by her mother's side to snip threads and collect coins, even at her tender age. School doesn't prove much easier for Qian, as her classmates are quick to scoff at her impoverished lifestyle, and she instead finds refuge in books, toys, and PBS shows and the occasional lucky find (Polly Pockets, for one) on the streets of New York City. As Qian deals with shady businessmen with questionable motives, Ba Ba's sometimes unbridled anger, and Ma Ma's untimely sickness, Qian fears each day could be her last in America. Can this young woman stand firm, hold steady, and find the Beautiful Country she has always envisioned...and make it her own?
I have always been drawn to memoir, but I have never TRULY identified with an author the way I did with Qian. This is in part because we have so much in common: we both grew up enamored with the written word, in love with Charlotte's Web, fascinated with Polly Pockets, lusting after Tamagotchis, drawn to the easy-breezy lives of the Wakefield Twins in Sweet Valley High and the powerful friendships of the girls in the Babysitter's Club: we are even the same age! Descriptions of Qian's self doubt and isolation also rang true with me, though we have vastly different life experiences. Though I've always been 'native' to the United States, ideologically I have always felt like I didn't TRULY belong in one way or another. Qian experienced all of this: but SO much more.
My heart broke over and over for her, but at the same time, I admired her unfailing resilience and determination to care for her parents and stand firm, no matter what the cost. She is a selfless and beautiful soul, and the fact that the 'rules' of a country or a sheet of paper could reduce her to a human considered less than in the eyes of the law is sickening to me. Her very essence even comes into question as her teacher can't comprehend that a Chinese immigrant could produce an out-of-this-world essay and assumes it MUST be plagiarized. Truly shocking, and yet, thinly veiled xenophobia hurts our nation today more than ever.
This memoir is heavy, emotional, and unlike anything I've ever read before. Although I won't reveal how Qian's journey ends, the last chapter was both heart-wrenching and hopeful, and Qian's author's note nearly left me in tears. She couldn't have picked a better time to bring her story to the world and I am so grateful to have read it.
Qian is a bold and brave woman who, by the end of her story, is finally allowed to define herself by what she is, rather than what she is not. An absolute stunner of a debut! Don't miss it!
4.5 ⭐, rounded up to 5 320 Justice for Marilyn 320 If you ever want to feel EXTRA grateful for what you have, this book might be perfect for you.
Imagine a seven-year-old girl in China who’s living a happy, simple life with friends and family who look and live like her. Now, two years after her father fled China for America, or ‘Mei Guo’ - ‘the beautiful country’, she and her mother are leaving the only home they’ve ever known to join him there. Imagine the culture shock: people of all different colors, your senses overwhelmed by the new and unknown, and embedded into this bewildering experience is FEAR. You live with constant, daily fear of being discovered and sent back if someone doesn’t believe the cover story that your father has drilled into you that you were born in America and have always lived here.
Qian Julie Wang has written an eye-opening debut memoir told through the lens of her youth, that is an incredible and often heartbreaking view of her life growing up as an illegal immigrant in New York City. Her proud parents were reduced from educated, capable professionals in China, to people living in NYC’s shadows - her mother finding work in a sweatshop, among other menial jobs, and her father doing laundry work for barely livable wages. They had to rely on others in their situation or those willing to turn a blind eye, but they could never truly live openly and freely.
Wang’s account of her formative years is straight-up traumatic - punctuated by racist treatment from adults and peers alike, an initial complete lack of English skills, daily unrelenting hunger and the stigma of suffocating poverty, life in a tiny share house apartment with no privacy, and her parents’ increasingly contentious marriage. As an only child with few opportunities for real friendship, her relationship with her parents, Baba and Mama, is especially difficult to read about since they were often in an emotional fog or occasionally turned their frustrations on her. You feel her loneliness and the struggle of how to perceive these people who simultaneously love her and hurt her.
It’s not an easy read and my only downside is just the gloom inherent in a story like this, but the sun did emerge from the clouds, so to speak. It was uplifting to watch Qian teach herself English through watching PBS shows and reading library books, and to see her use her education to eventually overcome her dismal circumstances. I had a whole new appreciation for the book’s title by the end.
A beautiful debut!
★★★★ ½ (rounded to 4)
Thanks to Doubleday Books, Netgalley and author Qian Julie Wang for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. It will be published on Sept. 7, 2021. 320 i’m a little biased 🙃 320 such a humbling story.
as qian julie wang recounts her childhood years as an undocumented immigrant in NYC, she explores not only the trials many immigrant families face, but also the beads of hope that create the foundation of a home.
before QJW came to america, friends and family in china told her of two americas - one where everyone is poor and hungry, and another of where everyone is rich and beautiful. and i think this memoir captures that duality of the US so perfectly, how both of those americas exist, no matter how heartbreaking that is.
deeply personal and (i imagine) deeply cathartic, this is a tale that explores the generational trauma that many asian american families experience, the immense pressure for perfection and honor many children of immigrants face, and the tremendous sacrifice parents go through in order to provide for a better life.
↠ 4.5 stars 320
In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is illegal and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.
In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly shopping days, when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center — confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all.
But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.
Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.
The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world — an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent Beautiful Country