3.5★
“‘What can you do?’ A fat man responded. The shape of his face reminded me of a steaming pork bun. Saliva formed in my mouth.

‘I was a math and computers professor in Hebei Province.’

‘Mei yong,’ he shook his head. Useless.’“Ever wash dishes?’

. . . ‘I’m really good at sewing.

‘Unh. Na zhe.’ And another slip of paper was stuffed into her hand.”

And with that, Ma Ma and little Qian Wang walk to a big, dark sweatshop in a warehouse-like building in New York where Ma Ma will sit hunched over a sewing machine, sewing labels into shirts for three cents each. This is summer holidays, between first and second grade for Qian, so she is given very heavy scissors to cut off loose threads for one cent a piece.

Welcome to America, Mei Guo, which translates literally to Beautiful Country. This is Qian Wang’s memoir of her earliest years as an undocumented Chinese migrant.

The first thing her father insisted she learn by heart was to say she was born here and had always lived in America. Otherwise – deportation. That meant they had to keep their heads down, avoid getting to know anybody too well, and stick to menial jobs.

Her father left China a few years earlier because he was too outspoken in class about his political views, and he knew the government would crack down soon. So he disappeared in an airplane, and Qian feared she would never see him again.

“Ba Ba was a professor, like Ma Ma. But where Ma Ma taught math, Ba Ba taught English literature.”

Now they are reduced to living in impoverished circumstances, not enough food, no privacy, terrible plumbing, and neighbours who don’t like “chinks”.

Not only that, the other Chinese are very selective about who is higher class than whom. Who is assumed to be a professional or a farmer or labourer seems to depend on which language or dialect you speak, Mandarin, Cantonese, or one of the many others. The class system, caste system, social elites, snobs - it's the same everywhere, and when you are living in hiding, you have to be extra careful.

Qian inherited her father’s stubbornness. While still in China, she could afford to step out of line.

“Once, I made the mistake of asking why two plus two equaled four. As punishment, the teacher forced me to write ‘Wo dui bu qi,’ I’m sorry, in characters, one hundred times. Despite that it cost me an extra character per sentence, I proudly wrote instead: ‘Wo bu dui bu qi.’ I am ‘not’ sorry. The teacher never noticed because it was not what we wrote that mattered. It was the ability to control us.”

She can't rebel much in her first American schools because there's only one little girl in her class who can interpret for her, and she’s not very friendly. I found this story fascinating, but the writing seemed to jump around, with some anecdotes left kind of open-ended so that I felt there might have been more to say.

I think it’s an important first-hand account of what forced migration feels like to a small child who can’t blend in with the mainstream culture of a country, no matter how hard she tries. She misses her grandparents and her old friends.

“Most of the people around us had brown skin and dark hair. Other than our Cantonese landlady, we rarely ever saw anybody who looked like us, and when we did, they never talked to us in Chinese. I wondered if we had left behind the only place in the world that had our people.”

This concentrates on her very young years, and then it races a bit to bring her up to today. It is interesting, certainly, and I’m glad I read it. I’d have enjoyed it more if it had flowed more smoothly, but it is real, and that’s worth a lot.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for the copy for review. And thanks to Qian Julie Wang for sharing her history with us.

Beautiful Country (memoir)

This powerful memoir is worth the hype. I alternated with the audio version (narrated by the author), which helped with pronunciation and made the author's experiences really come to life. The detailed setting of the Wang Family's apartment in New York City showed the reader a different side of the city, and her vivid descriptions of childhood experiences were heartbreakingly well- written. If you're looking for a detailed memoir or to learn more about the fear that undocumented immigrants experience daily, this is one you won't want to miss.

Full review to come on bookstagram.

An immigration story from the valuable perspective of a child. Although her continued experience into adulthood would also have been interesting, this is still a worthy addition to stories that reveal the immigration experience in its many facets.

Thank you for the chance to read this. Beautiful. Captivating. At times heartbreaking. More stories like this need to be told!

Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

Brief Summary: A moving story of acculturation by a girl who immigrated from China with her parents and grew up in New York City.

Highlights: I found her account fascinating; trying to make friends and fit in, and learn. I also found her mother trying to access healthcare frustrating and telling. The stress they dealt with was palpable.

Explanation of Rating: 3.5/5-it was slow at times but overall I learned a lot and felt grateful my parents didn’t feel they needed to take us to a foreign country to better our lives!

This would be a great book to read to celebration Asian American and Pacific Islander month in May!

Thank you to Net Galley and Doubleday Books for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review

Seven-year-old Qian and her family leave China to migrate to Mei Guo, which translates directly to “beautiful country.” When she arrives in NYC in 1994 not yet understanding what's ahead of her, Qian and her family face immense poverty and their fears as "illegals" living in the promised land.

This memoir follows Qian through her childhood in America. Incredibly well-written and devastatingly heartbreaking, Qian's story gives an immigrant perspective that is so needed in today's world. I highly recommend reading this book!

This was an inspiring memoir about immigrants from China to the United States. I found it slow at times, but overall it was very interesting to learn about the barriers they encountered and the challenges they faced with fitting in and thriving in America. Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the ARC. This is my honest review.

I love the way a memoir glimpses into another person's life and POV. This is a beautiful story of growing up, living in America as an immigrant, navigating complicated family dynamics and mental health, and handling hunger/poverty in childhood.

Qian's writing was beautiful and her story truly moved me. I just wish we got a little bit more information about her life post childhood when she became a lawyer. I appreciated her focus on childhood, but would have loved to gotten a little bit more of her story from now.

Overall this is an important, touching, and heart-breaking story of being an immigrant in America, and one I am definitely glad that I was able to read.

I was excited to read this memoir about a young girl whose family moves from China to NYC in search of a better life. The story brought to light the reality of a new language, an entirely different culture, and how Wang's family's lives changed when they came to America. Her parents left China where they were educated professionals only to come to NYC and be forced to work menial jobs and live in poverty. It made me appreciate what I am so fortunate to have.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity tonread this ARC.

Awhile ago I decided to never rate a memoir below three stars because that implies that their life is "only okay", or their struggle wasn't worth more. This was an arc from netgallery.

Qian writes her story as a grader schooler in New York City as an illegal immigrant. She takes that role too seriously though, because not much is explained to the adults reading it. It's written through the eyes of the child experiencing it. I didn't understand why her father went in the first place, why the mother was anxious to leave her life in academica and none of the legal ramifications of what actually would happen. Of course a child wouldn't know, but adult readers could be told more details.

For example, she mentions going "shopping" at times and its not until many pages later that it occurs to me that the family is really just going through the neighbor's trash on pickup day. There were bits and pieces of her story just left dangling, such as a man who would take them to McDonalds but never really explained who he was other than someone who had his hair cut from from her mother or when her father was dressed as for a job interview and she sees him on a field trip, but it's never explained why he's dressed up. There were so many disconnects for me, such as (view spoiler)

I think this would be a great YA novel.

Perhaps the one take-away from this for parents is, if you ask your child to keep one secret, then they have no reason not to keep many secrets. I'm sure Qian's parents cringed when they read this, especially her mother's preparation of tea for her boss and her fathers' urging what books to get when she won a $50 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble. Yet they did keep a roof over her head, didn't give her siblings, let her attend school vs working, settled in a neighborhood (Chinatown) where she was somewhat familiar and would have fed her more but for her lies that she was eating free meals at school.

There's a happy ending at the end, but I wish she would have mentioned how her parents are doing.

If you’re looking for a memoir about someone’s experience that’s very likely completely different from your own, look no further.

In Beautiful Country, we are told of the childhood of Qian (“Julie”) as she comes to the US and grows up as an undocumented immigrant in New York City. As you might imagine, often times the conditions described are shocking. It was also interesting to read of examples of officials knowing her family was undocumented and continuing to provide some resources (for example, Qian goes to school and is on the free meal program though the school is well aware of her family’s status). Of course, the story here is mostly from a child’s perspective, memories, and limited knowledge; while fascinating, I found I had many, many questions about Qian’s family’s journey. The book ends somewhat abruptly as well, and I was left wanting more, feeling as though I didn’t get the whole story. Overall, it was interesting to read about this family’s immigrant experience and the strain it put on their relationships as well. I always like to gain new perspectives.

• Thank you NetGalley and Doubleday Books for a free e-ARC of this title to read and review.

This is such a beautifully honest, heartbreaking and inspiring memoir of living as a "undocumented" family in America. Told from the point-of-view as herself as a child, how she perceives the world, her identity and her place in it is so incredibly vivid and poignant. The author is so descriptive in her writing, I felt like I was there with her as she tries to make sense of a strange new world, new language, new culture. Her book not only gave me insight into her life growing up but also made me feel compassion for all immigrant families and children who are searching for a better life. I particularly like how she writes how her younger self still shows up as she navigates life as an adult (and finds success as a Civil Rights attorney after an impressive education). I highly recommend this moving and personal memoir. Thank you to Netgalley and Doubleday Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A well written and heartbreaking memoir of an undocumented child in the US. Eye opening and har hitting emotionally

Thank you netgalley for a chance to review this! Every story was beautiful and eye opening in its own way. Learning what children had to go through was hard. I loved each story on their own!

Beautiful Country is a beautifully written memoir about an undocumented girl and her family living in poverty in New York City. Qian and her family came from China in 1994 for a better life. Her parents were professors in China, in America as undocumented workers they were forced to take the most menial jobs for little pay. Do you wonder how that sashimi was cut -- I was freezing just reading about one of her mother's jobs.

This realistic and heartbreaking portrait of poverty really had me thinking of how we are blind to this need in our own backyards. Take a Christmas Secret Santa exchange in school. Qian saves her pennies and buys a Hello Kitty pencil that she covets for one of the wealthiest girls in the class. When she shows up with the pencil in the little brown paper bag and sees all her classmates' gifts wrapped with bows, etc., she just knows she missed the mark. I wanted to hug her.

This is also a story of how libraries were a lifeline for Qian and helped her to become the lawyer she is today. This is one reason why I will always support my local library!

Qian was lucky -- her mother devised a plan to go to Canada and get legal status so they could stop living in fear of deportation.

5 beautiful stars

While I was busy raising my daughter in white suburbia, immigrant families worked in sweat shops and struggled to put food on the table. I had little idea that this was happening in ‘America the Beautiful’ in the 1980s. Beautiful Country, a literal translation for “America” is a powerful story of a Chinese family struggling to not only survive but find its way despite pervasive fear of being caught as illegal immigrants. As a young child, Quian fears she had failed to protect Ma Ma from a disease and hospitalization by wanting a cat. That kind of superstition and anxiety were foreign to me. So was her hunger and the prejudice she faced.

Qian has a fantastic memory for details and writes with great honesty. Once she discovered ‘free books’ at the library, her life began to change. She devoured books, including The Babysitter’s Club series that my daughter read. Qian’s sixth grade her white male teacher accused her of copying others’ works because her writing was so good. After that, she purposely put mistakes in her essays. My heart broke for her.

Wang’s prose is insightful: “I caught the sight of Ba Ba standing alone by his new car, face dark with the sadness of a boy who had no one to play with.” Few words elicit strong emotions. Her writing is luminescent, “She was a raisin of herself.”

Even in the acknowledgements section, Wang’s writing shines. “You have magicked my pipe dream into reality, and I will forever be pinching myself. To everyone in the publishing industry committed to amplifying the voices of authors from marginalized backgrounds – thank you. Progress would be impossible without heroes like you. She even thanks her therapists for “helping me process and understand my childhood, work through the anxiety that came with sharing it with the world, and most of all, reclaim my life from its jaws.”

I look forward to more of Qian Julie Wang’s writing. Her work is truthful and important.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a powerful story of the immigrant experience in the United States. Told with heartbreakingly beautiful prose, it really painted a picture of the constant state of fear, hopelessness and anxiety that undocumented immigrants live through daily. Qian’s childhood was defined by the constant state of poverty and the fear that they would be deported.

Qian is an incredible writer. I felt as if I was with her and her family experiencing all the hardship they faced. This is a must read. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a great and powerful memoir. Lives are more than political points and I think a lot of people forget or don't acknowledge the struggles that immigrants endure to live in the United States.

The title says it all for this moving and heartbreaking memoir that has left an imprint in both my mind and on my heart

A great book but it drones on. I found myself uninterested to keep reading. It was extremely detailed but almost too much?