Beautiful Country: A Memoir

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-8

Chapters 9-13

Chapters 14-18

Chapters 19-24

Chapter 25-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Generational Trauma and Its Effects

Generational trauma affected all of the members of the Wang family. Long before she was born, her father confronted violence and abuse during the Cultural Revolution, during which his family was ostracized from their community. The pain Ba Ba’s family endured colored the choices he later made, his perspective on the world, and his actions. As Ma Ma explained to Qian, Ba Ba’s “childhood left in him a fear so big that it eclipsed everything, even the people he loved most” (204). Qian did not fully see how trauma affected her own life until she was able to look back “through an adult lens” (98)—the point of view of the adult Wang writing this memoir. Ba Ba’s experiences became an inheritance of fear and frustration which Qian struggled to escape.

Ba Ba’s trauma exhibited itself through cruelty to others and self-denigration. On the one hand, Ba Ba became increasingly violent and mean to his family: He was abusive to his wife and incredibly discouraging of his daughter’s intellect and ambitions. In turn, Qian mimicked this coping mechanism through her treatment of her school friends. Conversely, Ba Ba’s trauma also disabled him from self-advocacy, particularly with Americans. Terrified of being deported for being undocumented, he lost his voice entirely. When speaking with Ma Ma’s doctors, he acted with deference and failed to ask the questions about her condition. Allowing trauma to permeate every aspect of his life, he could not bring himself to push for a better life. For a long time, Qian, too, lost her voice, falling silent in situations where an authority figure like her teacher Mr. Kane was being unfair. Wang breaks this cycle by confronting her trauma by writing this memoir.

The Power of Fear

Fear is incredibly powerful in Wang’s memoir, infecting almost every aspect of the Wangs’ experiences in China and in the US. When Ba Ba had to flee China for his political views, Qian and her mother feared that they would not see him again. When they met up with him in the US, they feared deportation so much that every knock at the door left them quaking. Because of the overriding fear of being found out to be undocumented, even when they were mistreated, they did not speak up.

When Ma Ma insisted that Qian stay away from the windows and keep the lights turned off, Qian had dreams that uniformed men were chasing her and her family.

Their paranoia soon became dangerous, exacerbating already physically damaging situations. Qian’s fears of authority figures caused her to hesitate to call 911 when Ma Ma needed immediate medical attention, possibly endangering Ma Ma’s life. When Qian was in the depths of hunger, wandering the streets to find free food, she stumbled across a uniformed group passing out food on the street. At the last minute, she ran away rather than be fed: “Fear was all I tasted; fear was all I contained; fear was all I was” (83).

Shifting Identity

In China, Qian had had a clear picture of who she was: a happy and joyful kid. She had played with her friends, she had been a leader at school, and her mother had marveled at her popularity. Qian’s immigration to the United States changed how she perceived herself. She was told to stay quiet and keep her head down, which meant she could no longer be outgoing. Chinese characters on television shows like The Simpsons caused Qian to feel self-conscious about her face and eyes. In school, she was ostracized for speaking Mandarin. Even among other Chinese students, Qian felt like an outcast.

The adults in Qian’s life contributed to this negative self-image. Her parents criticized her appearance, and Ba Ba felt that her dream of being a lawyer was unrealistic. Mr. Kane, Qian’s fifth grade teacher, emphasized that she must understand her place in life. He ridiculed her clothes and admonished her for being lazy. The adults in her life seemed also to struggle with their own identities. Wu Ah Yi had eyelid surgery to change the appearance of her eyes, and she made fun of her daughter for having smaller eyes. These experiences shaped the way Qian saw her cultural heritage.

To escape an identity that was bringing her so much pain, Qian tried a variety of tacks. She first told her classmates lies about her father and her family—that he was a cop, that she was mixed race—designed to try out other ways of being. When these lies were easily found out, Qian started calling herself “Julie,” a name that made her feel more like one of her favorite characters on PBS Kids. Although Mr. Kane mocked this renaming, and Qian abandoned it for a while, when she and her mother moved to Canada, Qian reclaimed Julie once more—as we can see from the fact that the memoir is by Qian Julie Wang.