Beautiful Country

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.