Beautiful Country: Book summary and reviews of Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

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Cathryn Conroy

A Memoir That Reads Like a Novel: Life as an Undocumented Immigrant Through the Eyes of a Child
When we make the effort to see so many things in life—joyful and tragic—through the eyes of a child, our viewpoint shifts. Think of the magic of Christmas or the tragedy of death as a child would see these. That is this book.

Written by Qian Julie Wang, this is the story of her immigration to the United States from China and her experiences as a little girl living with her parents in New York City in the 1990s. Residing on long-expired temporary visas, none of them has legal documentation. In China, her parents were both professors; her father taught English, while her mother taught mathematics. In the United States, they have the lowest level of jobs, none of which are particularly stable and all of which are boring and sometimes dangerous.

Qian is trained from age seven when she first immigrated to never trust anyone other than her parents. She is to avoid—to the point of running in the opposite direction—all police, as well as anyone in authority. Her father, Ba Ba, sternly instructs her to tell anyone who asks that she was born in the United States. After all, it only takes one unguarded moment, and the family will be deported. They live in poverty in New York City's Chinatown, renting just a single room or later two rooms with a kitchen and bathroom they share with multiple families. Qian doesn't have the basics that other children take for granted, including enough food to eat or shoes that fit her properly. "Shopping day" means scavenging on the sidewalks through trash cans. Qian grows up consumed by adult worries as she learns to survive by lying and keeping secrets. But even with this as the foundation of her life, her story isn't all sad because she tells it as she remembers it through the eyes of a child.

From teaching herself English by reading picture books and "The Berenstain Bears" to riding the subway alone to eating at McDonald's for the first time, this is a memoir of both the familiar and unfamiliar, filled with joy and heartache as Qian is denied so much simply because she is a poor undocumented immigrant. As a child, Qian works in a sweatshop literally earning pennies for her efforts, while she goes hungry most of the day. Still, her world is rocked when she discovers the New York Public Library and all the free(!!) books. After Qian adopts a black cat that she names Marilyn (after Marilyn Monroe), her father blames the cat for their bad luck. When Ma Ma becomes seriously ill requiring a long hospitalization and surgery, Qian's small world nearly collapses. The health and financial strains become too much for her parents' marriage, and when Ba Ba does the unthinkable, Ma Ma and Qian leave him for Toronto where they are considered "legal" and enjoy the opportunities that entails.

The book is focused entirely on Qian's childhood from first grade through sixth grade, but at the end, we learn how she made such a success of her life by first earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Swarthmore College and then her law degree from Yale University. She now works as an attorney specializing in education and civil rights impact litigation meaning this book has the happiest of endings.

Beautifully written in a lively narrative style, this profound memoir reads more like a novel. It is a remarkable story about a brave, smart, resilient, and creative child who grew up in the worst possible conditions. This is a book that everyone should read.

lani

The pursuit of the American dream
Who can forget the iconic picture of the Afghan baby being passed over the wall into the waiting arms of the Marine Soldiers? Who could forget the anguished looks of parents trying to get their children and themselves to safety in order to secure a better life. Qian's book describing her resettlement in NYC from China aroused similar feelings regarding the life of immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants. While Qian's parents were educated professionals in their home country, here they could barely get by with menial jobs. Money was extremely tight, the constraint of not knowing the language, the constant fear of being discovered colored their daily lives.

Qian lived with a sense of filial responsibility and from early on learned how to be independent as she navigated the streets to her mother's sweat shop, then to school, and then conquering the subway system at such a young age. While her parents were loving to each other in China, the pressures of life in America pulled them apart making them silent accomplices to Qian's confused mental state. Yet, there are moments of great levity as Qian expertly guides us with a child's voice throughout the book, which moves on while the undocumented status continues to paint and color their lives.

This is a book that tore my heart out.