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A review by chemistreadingonthejob
Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor by Anna Qu
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
3.0
Insightful, Poignant, but a Hollow Ending
Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor is Anna Qu's experience enduring child abuse and forced labor. Anna Qu's early childhood was spent in China being raised by her grandparents while her mother worked in a sweatshop in America. When her mother married and saved enough money, Anna immigrated to Queens, New York to be with her new family. There she was treated as a servant and abused by her mother. After working at her parents sweatshop, and being unable to focus on her education she made the decision to contact CPS. Child Protective Services assigned a social worker that changes everything, but her relationship with her mother remains strained. As an adult Anna is forced to confront her trauma when she loses her job at a crumbling tech startup. Anna Qu reflects on the impact of immigration, generational trauma, and empathy.
"I am beginning to realize that we are all raised by children. Children that are shaped by their own traumas, some of them unable to forget or overcome what happened to them before they passed it along."
Before Made in China, I had not read anything that described what it is like to work in a sweatshop as a child with so much detail. Anna writes eloquently and brings strong emotions to the surface with just a few words. Her resilience is inspiring. I could not even begin to fathom what it would be like to be neglected and abused by an unfamiliar family in a strange country. The fact that Anna can still forgive and have empathy for her mother's past is a testament to the kind of person Anna is. Made in China is a short memoir with 224 pages and only 5.5 hrs for the audiobook. The ending felt abrupt and unfinished. As with most memoirs, her life isn't over yet, but it definitely has loose ends. I had a hard time with the chronology because the chapters go back and forth between her childhood and the startup. I enjoyed learning about Anna Qu's experiences, but this memoir has alot of angles and feels incomplete. I would still recommend this to those who are interested in immigration survival stories.
Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor is Anna Qu's experience enduring child abuse and forced labor. Anna Qu's early childhood was spent in China being raised by her grandparents while her mother worked in a sweatshop in America. When her mother married and saved enough money, Anna immigrated to Queens, New York to be with her new family. There she was treated as a servant and abused by her mother. After working at her parents sweatshop, and being unable to focus on her education she made the decision to contact CPS. Child Protective Services assigned a social worker that changes everything, but her relationship with her mother remains strained. As an adult Anna is forced to confront her trauma when she loses her job at a crumbling tech startup. Anna Qu reflects on the impact of immigration, generational trauma, and empathy.
"I am beginning to realize that we are all raised by children. Children that are shaped by their own traumas, some of them unable to forget or overcome what happened to them before they passed it along."
Before Made in China, I had not read anything that described what it is like to work in a sweatshop as a child with so much detail. Anna writes eloquently and brings strong emotions to the surface with just a few words. Her resilience is inspiring. I could not even begin to fathom what it would be like to be neglected and abused by an unfamiliar family in a strange country. The fact that Anna can still forgive and have empathy for her mother's past is a testament to the kind of person Anna is. Made in China is a short memoir with 224 pages and only 5.5 hrs for the audiobook. The ending felt abrupt and unfinished. As with most memoirs, her life isn't over yet, but it definitely has loose ends. I had a hard time with the chronology because the chapters go back and forth between her childhood and the startup. I enjoyed learning about Anna Qu's experiences, but this memoir has alot of angles and feels incomplete. I would still recommend this to those who are interested in immigration survival stories.