Editorial Content for Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
A Chinese immigrant recalls her abusive mother, her childhood working in a garment factory, and her adult years looking back on those tough times and realizing how even the systems she trusted had betrayed her in significant ways. But hope survives even the saddest circumstances, as she will come to understand and convey in her lively memoir, MADE IN CHINA.
Anna Qu presents her recollections in a precise, distressing chronology that sheds light on both the strictures of her Chinese cultural heritage and the sometimes arbitrary carelessness of the American social system meant to protect youngsters from neglect and mistreatment. Born in China, Qu was left with her grandparents after her father died; her mother struck out for the United States to gain some measure of financial independence and the promise of a better life. But for the author, the better life did not pertain.
"Qu writes with great fluidity, giving her memoir a novelistic reach that speaks of a new career path in the realm of words and their truest meanings."
When she is old enough to work in the factory co-owned by her mother and stepfather in Queens, New York, her life becomes a ceaseless round of schoolwork, duties at the factory, and maid’s chores at home caring for her step-siblings and being largely ignored, when not being insulted and deprived by her parents. She likes school but struggles to learn enough English to cope, and might have excelled academically early on had her icily dictatorial mother allowed her even a few hours a week for homework. Once, angry at her rebellious ways, her mother sends her back to China for a painful period.
Upon her return to the States, Qu finally accesses child protective services, but will later learn that for all the professional attention shown to her at the time, that system never officially considered her to have been abused. The shock of that realization comes when Qu is embarking on adulthood, finishing college and working diligently to be self-sufficient. The reports from her teen years seem to coldly assess her as not the victim she clearly knew herself to have been. And perhaps, she must now conclude, that was for the best. Her comfort as the book comes to an end is the reunion with her Chinese grandmother, the one person who always showed her genuine love and respect.
Qu writes with great fluidity, giving her memoir a novelistic reach that speaks of a new career path in the realm of words and their truest meanings. Her mastery of English and her memory of several Chinese dialects will give her gritty memories a special punch for those trapped in similar circumstances, whether as immigrants, sweatshop workers, survivors of childhood abuse, or simply strong young women overcoming the odds to gain the best that life has to offer.
Teaser
As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life. Nearly 20 years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work.
Promo
As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life. Nearly 20 years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work.
About the Book
A young girl forced to work in a Queens sweatshop calls child services on her mother in this powerful debut memoir about labor and self-worth that traces a Chinese immigrant's journey to an American future.
As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American, and such is their tough path in their new country. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life.
Nearly 20 years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, and on the brink of losing her job as the once-shiny start-up collapses, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work.
Traveling from Wenzhou to Xi'an to New York, MADE IN CHINA is a fierce memoir unafraid to ask thorny questions about trauma and survival in immigrant families, the meaning of work and the costs of immigration.
Audiobook available, read by Catherine Ho
