Beautiful Country: A Memoir

Loss of voice is a powerful and persistent motif throughout the memoir. Qian often felt squelched: Ma Ma frequently admonished Qian be quiet, a refrain that punctuated her childhood. At the employment agency, the man behind the desk did not listen when Qian tried to defend her mother’s abilities. At home, her parents told Qian to be quiet during dinner to stymie their eavesdropping landlady. Before starting school in America, Ba Ba told Qian that she must not say anything about her upbringing in China—that she should always lie that she grew up in the United States.

Qian was not the only one who experienced this loss of voice. Ba Ba, once a joyful and vibrant English professor, was silenced by his experiences in the United States. Qian watched as her father acted deferentially toward Lao Jim and the surgeon at the hospital; his interactions with white men revealed his own loss of voice.

In the memoir’s opening chapter, “How It Began,” Wang writes that Trump’s presidency inspired her to recapture her voice and share her story. Her memoir explores the importance of that voice and the value in speaking up.