Book of the Month: "Beautiful Country" by Qian Julie Wang
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang is a touching memoir that was published Sept. 7 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group whose parent organization is Penguin Random House. In the memoir, it is 1994 when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York with her parents and interprets the contradictory Chinese translation for the place, Mei Guo, or “beautiful country.”
Everything in America was different from how it was in China. In China, Qian’s parents were professors, but in Chinatown, they worked in sweatshops, often accompanied by little Qian herself. She recalls being doted upon as a cute, funny girl in China, but in America, her stressed parents instead lashed out at her and each other.
If there was a delight to be had, Qian found it. Coming to the country knowing limited English and having little money ostracized her from social settings, though she found solace in the books she studied, greasy pizza, and “shopping days” where she’d find little treasures amongst the trash lining the streets of Brooklyn.
Suddenly, Qian’s mother is stuck by illness while her father retreats into himself, leaving Qian grasping at what her father taught her: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.
The childhood perspective Qian Julie Wang grants readers into her life is indispensable. Not only was the memoir beautifully written, but her charm and strength in detailing a familiar yet unheard narrative highlight the invisibility of American immigrants and a girl who would not stop until she found her way out of the shadows.
Wang is now a New York Times bestselling author and civil rights litigator. In the memoir, Qian was determined to go to Harvard. Instead, she graduated from Yale Law School and Swarthmore College where she met some of her best friends. According to her website, “she is (also) a managing partner of Gottlieb & Wang LLP, a firm dedicated to advancing education, disability, and civil rights.”
If you are as particularly inspired by Wang’s stories as I am, she encourages those looking to get involved to look into some of the following organizations dedicated to helping undocumented and young immigrants: Make the Road New York, Kids in Need of Defense, Safe Passage Project, United We Dream, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, and Americans for Immigrant Justice.
