Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang
Reviewed by: Deb Alig, Circulation Assistant
Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir
Suggested Age: Adult
What is this book about? Qian Julie Wang’s memoir is an insider’s look at the dark side of living illegally in the United States. During the 1960s, when the Cultural Revolution began in China, Qian’s uncle was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned for publicly criticizing Mao Zedong and Communism. This trouble then affected the whole Wang family. They were labeled “treasonous” and Qian’s grandparents were often humiliated and beaten. Qian’s father was also persecuted. Though he became an English professor in China, he fled to New York City without his family to escape the political restraints and oppression of the Chinese government. On July 29, 1994, with temporary visas, Qian and her mother joined him in Mei Guo, the Chinese word for America literally meaning beautiful country. But as undocumented immigrants who constantly faced prejudice and lived in the fear of being found out, the United States proved to be less than beautiful for them.
Though both her parents were professors in China, in the United States, because of their undocumented status, they had no choice but to work menial jobs in Chinatown sweatshops where the pay was poor and the working conditions deplorable. Qian’s parents worked long, brutal hours, but they barely made enough money to survive. They could only afford to live in a run-down apartment in Brooklyn where they occupied a single room and shared a kitchen and bathroom with other impoverished tenants. There was little privacy. There was little food. Qian was always hungry, especially when she attended school. Being hungry, it was difficult for her to concentrate. Plus, she did not speak or write English. She was placed in classes with students who had cognitive disabilities and was mostly left on her own to learn. She slowly picked up English by reading children’s books like The Berenstain Bears, Clifford, and The Babysitters-Club and by watching PBS Kids and The Puzzle Place on a TV her father found in the garbage. (Qian’s middle name Julie comes from a puppet who portrays a Chinese-American girl on The Puzzle Place.) Qian’s mother became ill, but she did not tell anyone for months fearing the scrutiny of a doctor’s visit and the cost of medical care. There was always the fear of deportation, so Qian’s father repeatedly told her, “Whatever happens, say you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.” The Chinese refer to being undocumented as living in the shadows or living in the dark. For five years, Qian and her family lived this way. They then fled to Canada where they attained documented immigration status and had better access to food, healthcare, housing, and education. Qian eventually returned to the United States to attend Yale Law School. In 2016, she became a citizen. She now works for a successful law firm and advocates for education and civil rights.
My Review: The United States is known world-wide as a beautiful country, so I was disappointed and saddened to learn how deplorable living and working conditions are for undocumented Chinese immigrants who currently reside here. These immigrants do not complain or demand better conditions because they fear deportation. Landlords and employers take advantage of this fear, and the illegal Chinese immigrants such as the Wang family struggle to live from day to day and to attain United States citizenship. Clearly, there is great need for reform in our country, a not-so-beautiful country for undocumented immigrants as described in Qian Julie Wang’s memoir.
Beautiful Country is written in English, but Chinese phrases written in the Latin alphabet are also included. This is called pinyin which is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese. When I finished reading the book, I listened to an audio version. The Chinese sounded like music to me with its high tones, low tones, and sharp inflections. It is a beautiful language.
Rating: 5/5
Three words that describe this book: eye-opening, unforgettable, poignant, humbling
Give this a try if you like: The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio and A Beginner’s Guide to America by Roya Hakakian
