Love, Compromised

Inspired to read more about contemporary AAPI experiences, I had plenty of great options to choose from. Among the most well-received of them, Beautiful Country stood out because I could relate to some small aspect of the author’s circumstances (we were the same age in the same region of the same country) and because she experienced American sweatshops firsthand. While those did indeed turn out to be relevant signals, the book delivered so much more than I bargained for.

Knowing that Wang is a practicing lawyer (and knowing very little beyond that), I expected her writing to be precise. I didn’t expect it to be so nuanced. It’s not easy to simultaneously write for people who share your cultural context and those who don’t, but Wang makes it seem effortless. She knows when to explain Mandarin words/Chinese traditions and when readers can infer their significance. By relating her experiences uncritically or with feigned naïveté, she authentically conveys the worldview of a bewildered child. Readers will recognize the meaning of some absolutely tragic circumstances long before seven-year-old Qian Qian, though the experience of her confusion might be the book’s greatest gift. Wang similarly taps into that little girl’s imagination through truly inspired imagery; my favorite reads:

Seeing [my father “Ba Ba”] again in that crowd was like looking at my own knee right after a fall–he looked new yet familiar, mine yet not mine. Like a joint newly reddened, blood seeping out from cracks in the skin, Ba Ba looked like himself, but skinnier, gaunter, more tired. A caved-in sallowness had taken over his face, over all of him. He wore a plain white shirt that was starting to fray at the edges, and wrinkled pants.

Wang’s strength as a writer allows her to convey the complex relationships she had with her mother, her father, the US, China, her peers, her teachers, and her ethnic heritage. She consistently pushes beyond the obvious flaws and considers the conditions that formed them. This empathy (together with some truly wholesome moments) makes what could have been a debilitating dirge into a touching memoir.

Beautiful Country focuses on the author’s first two years in the ‘States. Wang’s choice to omit her early adulthood should have been obvious by the halfway point, but I was so captivated that I didn’t recognize it until I reached the final pages. One can only imagine how she learned and grew through her adolescence in Canada, her education at Yale, and her practice as a lawyer. I’ve never felt so eager to read beyond the conclusion of a memoir. Fortunately, it sounds like Wang might give us more.