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A review by oomilyreads
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang
5.0
Beautiful Country memoir written by Qian Julie Wang
A poignant memoir through the eyes of an undocumented immigrant child in the most powerful & richest country in the world. At age 7, Qian Wang arrived in NYC in the summer of 1994 with her Ma Ma to reunite with her Ba Ba who arrived a few years earlier. For the next 5 traumatizing years, Qian goes from well-fed & happy in China to malnourished & painfully hungry while living in constant fear of deportation.
“…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”.
Her parents were academic professors in China and well regarded but due to political prosecution during China’s Cultural Revolution, her father made the decision to leave that life. He said to Wang, “…was on top in China but now he is on the bottom in America. Just like us”. Her father chose a life in America, to live in poverty, his only child navigating a foreign school, working in sweatshops & degrading jobs, lacking basic health care rather than living in China as a literature professor. His own childhood trauma passed on to Wang creating turmoil in hers. Her fear was not from the American government finding her but the wrath of her father’s rage.
I was heartbroken throughout this memoir as I saw through the eyes of a young desperate child who did not understand her new world. Throughout her formative years, it seemed that adults were failing her. Her father for so many reasons I find hard to explain. Wang’s incessant need to protect her mother instead of the other way around. When her mother fell very sick, Wang developed irrational ways to protect her mother. I did these exact same things growing up. I didn’t realize other kids did the same thing under times of tremendous stress & hardship. Our desperate need to make things right. Even her teachers (except Miss Pong) who rejected or denied her intelligence.
This memoir reminds us that at the core we are all very similar. As children, we NEED protection, love, shelter, & food.
The memoir is written in greater part to encompass a span of 5 years while Wang was undocumented. Wang said it took intense therapy to unlock her past that ate her up for years but she was finally able to confront it and write this incredible memoir. Her mentor, a judge said to her “Secrets. They have so much power, don’t they?” By writing about her childhood, we see weaved throughout her childhood is her ability to imagine, to read obsessively and to learn and aspire. Therefore, we must remember that children are innocent & they deserve stability & education. Wang who graduated from Yale Law and is now an attorney gives us an eye-opening glimpse of her perspective as a undocumented child surviving the harshness of profound poverty & being invisible in the Land of the Free.
A poignant memoir through the eyes of an undocumented immigrant child in the most powerful & richest country in the world. At age 7, Qian Wang arrived in NYC in the summer of 1994 with her Ma Ma to reunite with her Ba Ba who arrived a few years earlier. For the next 5 traumatizing years, Qian goes from well-fed & happy in China to malnourished & painfully hungry while living in constant fear of deportation.
“…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”.
Her parents were academic professors in China and well regarded but due to political prosecution during China’s Cultural Revolution, her father made the decision to leave that life. He said to Wang, “…was on top in China but now he is on the bottom in America. Just like us”. Her father chose a life in America, to live in poverty, his only child navigating a foreign school, working in sweatshops & degrading jobs, lacking basic health care rather than living in China as a literature professor. His own childhood trauma passed on to Wang creating turmoil in hers. Her fear was not from the American government finding her but the wrath of her father’s rage.
I was heartbroken throughout this memoir as I saw through the eyes of a young desperate child who did not understand her new world. Throughout her formative years, it seemed that adults were failing her. Her father for so many reasons I find hard to explain. Wang’s incessant need to protect her mother instead of the other way around. When her mother fell very sick, Wang developed irrational ways to protect her mother. I did these exact same things growing up. I didn’t realize other kids did the same thing under times of tremendous stress & hardship. Our desperate need to make things right. Even her teachers (except Miss Pong) who rejected or denied her intelligence.
This memoir reminds us that at the core we are all very similar. As children, we NEED protection, love, shelter, & food.
The memoir is written in greater part to encompass a span of 5 years while Wang was undocumented. Wang said it took intense therapy to unlock her past that ate her up for years but she was finally able to confront it and write this incredible memoir. Her mentor, a judge said to her “Secrets. They have so much power, don’t they?” By writing about her childhood, we see weaved throughout her childhood is her ability to imagine, to read obsessively and to learn and aspire. Therefore, we must remember that children are innocent & they deserve stability & education. Wang who graduated from Yale Law and is now an attorney gives us an eye-opening glimpse of her perspective as a undocumented child surviving the harshness of profound poverty & being invisible in the Land of the Free.