Beautiful Country

Gorgeous, heartbreaking, and sometimes even funny. A great memoir of being a child and an undocumented immigrant.

A vivid, and powerful memoir that tells the story of a young Chinese girl who immigrates to America, but discovers terror and struggle that comes with being undocumented in a country whose language you do not speak and who does not provide resources or safety to those in her family's position.

Seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994, after her father has escaped China 2 years before. Her parents were highly educated professionals, but 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. Over the next 3 years, the stress and living conditions that their toll physically and mentally on everyone in the family.

This is a story of how secrets destroy families, how little is done to acknowledge or help those living in horrific poverty in the United States, the struggles that people of color have finding/keeping/discovering their identity in a country that holds whiteness as the ideal, and the resilience and persistence of those who work their whole life to break free of the outside forces that hold them down.

***Thank you to Doubleday Books for providing me with the e-ARC for free via NetGalley for an unbiased review.

This memoir is an eye-opening exposure to the realities of undocumented life in America in the 90s. Wang arrives in America with her mother as a small child, barely school age, to join her father, who had left to escape the trauma inflicted by the government of the Chinese Revolution – trauma that Wang herself is far too young to understand or remember. But in New York City, brand new traumas await them as the family spends five years scraping by, trying to cobble together some kind of life while avoiding deportation.

Eye-opening is the best phrase I can think of; the author is roughly my age, but her childhood was wildly different than mine, highlighting the extreme privilege of my upbringing. This book really splits apart the idea of the American Dream - for while the author achieved some version of that (being a lawyer and author and whatnot), she only did so on the back of her broken family, and by denying her identity to mold into what she had to be to survive.

Unfortunately the writing didn't captivate me. Instead of reflecting on her experience from her current perspective, the author narrates as though she were that child. This has an effect, certainly, of seeing her experience through the eyes of the little girl she buried, which I'm sure was both therapeutic for her, and is immersive for the reader. I just personally didn't like it, because I'm drawn to complexity. The last two chapters were hands down the most beautiful – downright awe-inspiring – I just wish there were more moments like that along the way.

Unputdownable once you get past the difficult start. Wang is a genuinely gifted writer, her words flow with a grace that remind me of Fred Astaire's dancing: the truly, truly talented make their art look effortless and sweep you along in their arms. I felt transported.

Difficult first: for the first forty pages, how I longed for a glossary! Wang introduces terms and names once, and expects you to keep up. Expect a lot of flipping-back until your brain catches up; and don't be discouraged, because it gets so worth it, so beautiful. Difficult also in content: the undocumented immigrant's appalling life of hunger, need, fear, and loneliness; the horrific sweatshop jobs; the bullying and abuse on the streets. And difficult in personal experience: the trauma of growing up with self-absorbed needy parents. Wang herself writes with exquisite self-awareness and I found myself certain, near the end, that she could only be writing this after years of therapy. (Yep: she thanks two therapists in her final Acknowledgments).

Oh so worth it, though, for the vividness of Wang's worlds, the China she left behind and the New York City she has to learn. Her observations feel a little too crisp to be believable as the recollections of a seven-to-nine-year-old, but I really can't be sure: even if a little of it is artistic license, the bulk of it feels real because Wang clearly learned at a very early age to be a caretaker, to listen and observe. A writer can't fake that kind of awareness. And again, her writing is just wonderful: Hardship is dimly lit, and its darkness shielded us. Swoon.

It's crazy to me that this author is roughly my age but grew up in what felt like a completely different America. Glad I finally got around to reading this book it was eye opening for sure.

6.5/10

This book was well written and did a good job showing how illegal immigrants have a rough time, and immigrants in general. It was great to see America through the eyes of a young child who had no concept of western culture when she arrived. Like most memoirs in this vein, the book is a lesson in empathy: try to put yourself in someone else's shoes, especially when they are very different from you. It's a skill we can all work on, and I find memoirs like this great as a reminder to not slack on extending grace and kindness to people, as well as to see the world through the eyes of someone with vastly different life experiences. As someone who also grew up very poor, some of the poverty sections felt very relatable to me, even if Wang was even poorer than I was.

The reason it's not a higher rating from me is that it's a pretty short book, that ends when she is still very young and quite abruptly. I don't think the story was over yet, but evidently the author disagrees. Also, some of the stuff she chose to focus on was just not captivating. Too Large of portions of this book are taken up with her trying to train a cat, going shopping, or some other mundane activity. Hell, there are 4-5 “I went to the bathroom” stories in here. I just think it could have been told a bit tighter, or expanded the length of time it covered. If I was to write a book strictly about my childhood, there would also be huge gaps and I may be inspired to fill space with random things I remembered; but it wouldn't be better for it.

I still think this is worth reading, though. I'm glad I read it and I would recommend it to others.