An absolutely gorgeous memoir, raw with emotion, honesty, and the naivety that accompanies moving to a new place, particularly a new country. There was such beauty in the simple stories of adopting a cat (her first pet) and meeting her first friend. The pain was palpable when discussing the bullying and racism that she faced in schools, as well as her mothers journey through the healthcare system.

Great memoir about an immigrant girl and her family. I especially liked how it focused on her role as primary English-speaking spokesperson for her family and the challenges associated with this role. Her parents are not able to work in the same careers they had in China and this adds to their frustration and poor economic situation.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” reads a poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty. But for many people immigrating to America from other countries, these words are just that: words. In BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY, Qian Julie Wang exposes the darker side of immigration to America: the plight of the undocumented, forced to live in abject poverty in the richest country in the world.

In Chinese, America is called Mei Guo, literally “beautiful country.” When seven-year-old Qian is told by her mother that they will be leaving China to live with her father in Mei Guo, she expects streets paved with gold, endless opportunities and, of course, a hearty welcoming. Instead, she is immediately met with fear, desperation and scarcity. Mei Guo smells strange and looks different, and Qian and her family rarely see anyone who looks like them, despite hearing about so many friends, neighbors and acquaintances who made the same trip from China before them. Qian’s mother, Ma Ma, views everything in their new home as “wei xian,” dangerous. Her father, Ba Ba, tells her only, “Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.” Having lived in America for two years before his wife and daughter, he knows far more about the dangers of being found out and deported.

With breathtaking honesty and exquisite prose, Qian walks readers through her years in America, starting with that fateful plane trip to her first taste of pizza and its delicious grease, all the way through high school. Upon her family’s arrival in America, her parents, formerly professors, quickly take up work in sweatshops where they are subjected to brutal conditions and low pay, all to barely make ends meet. The love they feel for their daughter is palpable through the sacrifices they make for her.

But even with the gift of hindsight, Qian is able to inhabit her childhood perception and highlight the stark differences between her upbringings in China and America. Whereas in China she was often told she was beautiful, sure to be on television one day, in America her own parents readily criticize her appearance, her weight (any extra pounds the product of sodium-rich foods, not greed or indulgence), and her inability to make the most of the opportunities they have granted her. It is easy as a grown-up to read the fear and desperation in their criticisms, but Qian is not here to reflect or to judge, but to lay bare the ways that the American dream can sully even interpersonal relationships when it becomes impossibly unreachable.

Qian’s schooling offers little reprieve. Her limited English quickly places her in an overrun class for children with “special needs,” and her teachers, blinded by racism and prejudice, take little interest in helping her move forward. Her classmates, with all the cruelty of children, are no different, though she does eventually make friends with other Chinese girls. But as she learns, even America’s Chinese citizens are starkly different. Many of them shun Chinese traditions and culture in order to assimilate, and even more of them are quick --- quicker, even, than their American neighbors --- to judge Qian and her “no-income” parents.

Bold, precocious and steadfast, Qian finds solace in books that she slowly teaches herself to read, and in the small treasures she hunts down on her family’s “shopping days,” where they walk the streets and turn the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” into reality. They take whatever is clean and unbroken enough to fill their home, while taking great care never to grab anything they can’t part with, knowing that one day they may have to flee in the dark of night.

It is not until Qian is older that she finally sees a glimpse of the Mei Guo that was promised to her when her mother takes her to see the Christmas tree and lights in Rockefeller Center. Slowly but surely, Qian’s life starts to look normal. Without realizing it, her family has climbed out of the poverty they lived in when they first arrived in the United States; she has learned to read and is able to write such strong essays that her racist teachers accuse her of plagiarism (a terrible meter for success, but a sure one nonetheless); and she even gets a pet, a cat named Marilyn after Marilyn Monroe, with her perfect white skin. And then tragedy strikes: Ma Ma becomes terribly ill, a product of a lifetime (crammed into only a few years) of harsh working conditions, poor diet and limited access to medical care. Qian sees her dreams start to crash and burn around her, but little does she know that her family has one last grasp at a life worth living: a new country with a far more lenient and humane approach to immigration.

Through every obstacle, achievement and growing pain, it is Qian’s parents who bear the weight of their sacrifices. Distracted and fearful, Ma Ma and Ba Ba are always looking over their shoulders, often squabbling and occasionally taking out their pains on Qian herself. Once respected members of their communities, they become “just Asian,” a collective group of the “weakest race,” small and fragile, but somehow still blamed for ruining a country they barely inhabit. Forced to assimilate but punished for anything viewed as “pretending to be white,” they walk an impossible line, one that tortures them mentally, emotionally and physically. Viewing them through the white gaze, Qian, even as a child, is not blind to the scars inflicted upon them. But she is also unwilling to let them down by becoming lazy or giving up, even when racism, poverty and perversion come right to her front door.

Now a managing partner at a successful law firm and a US citizen, Qian has clearly “made it.” But although her rise to glory is awe-inspiring, it is not her success that makes this book so affecting. Successful or not, her life, her journey and her horrific arrival in America should mean something. And as she reminds us, with her nearly supernatural ability to view every slight, joy and tragedy through her own childhood eyes, there is far more to her story, and the story of other children like her, than a happy ending. She shines a harsh but revealing light on the shadows of poverty, prejudice and life as an undocumented person, leaving her readers with a crucial and essential addition to the wealth of literature about the American dream, immigration and life in the world’s richest country.

Full of keen emotional insight, gorgeous, heartrendingly lyrical prose, and the humbling story of a girl coming of age in an impossible situation, BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY is an astonishingly poignant and unforgettable book.

In Beautiful Country, Qian recounts her childhood as an undocumented Chinese immigrant living in poverty in New York City. Her parents were reduced from working as educated professionals in China to living in the shadows in NYC, her mother working in sweatshops and her father doing laundry for a barely livable wage.
My heart broke over and over for Qian. As an only child with limited opportunities for friendship, her relationship with her parents was especially difficult to read about as they were emotionally absent and struggling to make it. It was hard to hear of the loneliness and struggle for a child to relate to the people who were supposed to love and protect her.
I loved the resilience that came through in Qian and her mother. Its a beautifully written memoir and I felt so much emotion as I listened. It’s one of those books that makes me grateful for my own childhood and it’s relative simplicity.

This book, this book, this BOOK!! I picked up a hardback copy so I could annotate to my heart's content, and I think I wore out my favorite highlighter by about halfway through. Qian Julie Wang could write the dictionary and I would read it, but writing the story of her family's experiences in Mei Guo (America, the Beautiful Country) makes her beautiful narrative style into so much more.

I loved the balance she strikes between lovely and candid—even though the writing is a treat, she isn't sugar-coating anything about her experience. I was utterly fascinated by each chapter, and distraught at the life that her family gave up to come make those 'big American dollars'.

Thank you for the opportunity to enjoy this book in advance. I will continue to shout about this one from the rooftops.

In the past, I haven't reviewed books that I haven't read. But, I have changed my mind. Firstly, I think that the fact that I couldn't finish a book is a valid criticism, and this is where we give feedback to the publisher. Secondly, I need to get my score up. I will not post this anywhere else but here. My rating will be based on what other people would think about this work.

I read about 30% of this book. I think that is a valuable contribution to the discourse surrounding race and immigration. I found that I was not motivated to pick it up. I couldn't get on with the writing style. However, I would encourage other readers to give it a try.

“Secrets. They have so much power, don’t they?”

Qian Julie Wang is born in China to a professional couple living under the shadow of governmental disfavor. Her father’s elder brother has written critically about Mao Zedong, naively signing his own name to the article, and as a result, the entire family lives under a cloud and the threat of violence, courtesy of Chinese Stalinism. When her father finds a way to relocate himself and his family to New York, it is under a tourist visa, and so they cannot legally remain in the USA, or get any sort of legitimate employment. Wang’s memoir tells of the deprivation and terror, combined with occasional lifesaving windfalls and ingenuity, of growing up as an “illegal,” and of how, against all odds, she ultimately finds success and citizenship.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Doubleday for the invitation to read and review, along with my apologies for being inexcusably late.

Wang comes to the USA, which in Chinese translates to “Beautiful Country,” as a small child. From the moment her feet touch American soil, her parents drill the story into her: “I was born here. I’ve lived here all my life.” Because they are in the US illegally, they must find work to do under the table, and so they are exploited by the most malevolent sweatshop owners. At first, Wang is also employed, toddling off to do piecework with her mother, but eventually she is enrolled in school, where she proves to be highly capable once she overcomes the barriers of language and culture.

More than anything, her life and that of her parents is dominated by fear and secrecy. Opportunities that would otherwise be helpful must often be bypassed because of the documentation required. Her parents’ emotional stability, their marriage, and her mother’s health are broken.

If this story seems unbearably grim—and I confess, this is why I delayed reading it, moving other, pleasanter stories to the top of my queue—it is ultimately a story of resilience and of triumph. Wang is a gifted writer, and she breaks up the horror by recounting small victories and pleasures that punctuate her youth. But the most important aspect of how the memoir is presented, is that everything is told through the lens of childhood, and so we see everything as a seven-year-old Chinese girl, a nine-year-old, etc. would see it.

Because I had fallen behind, I checked out the audio version of this memoir from Seattle Bibliocommons, and Wang does her own narration, which is my favorite way to hear a book, because there’s no danger that the reader will add emphasis or interpretation that conflicts with the author’s intentions. The climax arrived as I was wrapping Christmas gifts, which made me all the more aware of my level of privilege.

Wang tells us:

“Most of all, I put these stories to paper for this country’s forgotten children, past and present, who grow up cloaked in fear, desolation, and the belief that their very existence is wrong, their very being illegal. I have been unfathomably lucky. But I dream of a day when being recognized as human requires no luck—when it is right, not a privilege. And I dream of a day when each and every one of us will have no reason to fear stepping out of the shadows.”

Highly recommended.

While the time spent to finish was long (I miss placed my Kindle) I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir. In my youth, growing up in Southern California I had many friends who migrated from Vietnam. While I understand it is nothing compared to the experience of the author, much of her story reminded me of many friends who endured misconceptions of Vietnamese immigrants. The writing is powerful in that I felt her emotions in her words. The worry and angst of a young girl. I was glued to the text waiting for the happiness to come from such an experience as hers. I highly recommend this memoir to everyone and especially those who want to understand the immigrant experience that has floated through the American experience since the inception of this country.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this wonderful novel.

“Secrets, they have so much power.” One of the best lines in the book. This story of a young girl moving to the US as a young immigrant and all the trauma associated with trying to hide their immigration status.

It is hard to imagine all the pain but the author tells the story with such detail and the reader feels they are sitting next to her trying to understand what the teachers are saying.

A great story with so many messages.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram!

Qian, the author tells the story of her youth. She grew up in China to professional parents until her Dad, Ba Ba decided to go to America……the land of opportunity. Or so he thought. Two years later her Mother, Ma Ma manages to leave China to join him. Life is not what she expects. The family lives in severe poverty, suffering hunger and often despair. Qian does a magnificent job portraying her young life, the story captured me, irritated me and yet I marvelled at her resilience. I highly recommend reading this autobiography.

Reading Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang was a fascinating and heartbreaking experience for me. Growing up as a near contemporary of the author, it is sobering to think about how different life experiences can be by mere chance of birth. This one should be read widely and discussed deeply.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

I found myself thinking this book took place longer than 40 years ago. How could people have been treated like this, in America in the 80's?
I felt strongly for the family and they what they went through.
It was interesting to read about a different culture and their introduction to a new country.

This memoir is an essential book for everyone to read -- intimate, open, honest, and gut-wrenching, this book reveals 2 versions of America: 1) the America that is created in propaganda, this dream that is then cut down by 2) the harsh reality of hatred and bigotry white "Americans" have towards immigrants that don't look or talk like them. This book illustrates the complicated relationship of America as "both savior and oppressor." This book serves as a reminder that this is a country built by immigrants and we can do so much more to help these families. I learned so much from this book, it was a privilege to read, and highly recommend it.

I am overjoyed that Wang’s story gets to be told. This story is important for many reasons but for me the one that sticks out the most is that most Americans don’t know that a lot of undocumented immigrants include a significant Asian population. When we think undocumented folks, we think of latinx folks and that’s just not the full reality. Bringing in some knowledge from Erika Lee’s THE MAKING OF ASIAN AMERICA: in the Americas, the Chinese were the first to be considered “illegal” because they were the first to be banned/excluded by immigration laws. This hits me hard because so many Asian Americans (even in my own fam) say stupid things like “those people should get in the RIGHT way” and I think… dude, these were our people just a couple hundred years ago.

On a general level, BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY captures (1) not only the undocumented experience but the socioeconomic experience — a glimpse into what it’s like starving during formative years of school and not being able to get any help, (2) the fear of living a “normal” life because of your immigration status, and (3) the nuanced loving-but-restrictive-and-pushy relationship between parent and child.

Beautiful Country is a must-read for everyone.

An interesting beginning of the story introduces us to the reason behind the book’s title — Beautiful Country. It hinges the readers into the curious choice and metaphorical reasoning hidden behind the shadows of the story and perpetuates to a dragging motion of intrigue towards reading the story.

What makes this book shine is the author’s courageous show of vulnerability. She told her life’s traumatic story and began in the earliest of her childhood.

Her writing style truly encapsulated the youthfulness of the narrative. It gave a feeling of innocence and complete disconnection to adult knowledge. This brilliant use of narrative really propelled the effectivity of the story to connect with its reader.

It is also interesting to note how Wang‘s writing has a certain poetic allure to it. She did not lie when her younger self claimed herself good with writing. Her use of words flow so naturally as if they are water, and her a well full of them

Marvelous in its show of the struggles of undocumented immigrants, Qian Julie Wang‘s memoir truly gave breath to a world not so visible to the eye. Her story is one to illuminate the world.

Amazing book about the life of an undocumented immigrant in the US and how small and insignificant that can make a person feel. The writing is so compelling - she tells the story from her childhood perspective while still allowing for an adult understanding - the 'character' says one thing, but the reader infers the bigger, often painful, picture. All the while she is growing up undocumented, there is an underlying notion of hope that is beautifully portrayed throughout. Wonderful, important story and so well told.

Please read this book. It’s brilliant, hearbreaking, heartfilled , horrific and hopeful. I’m reading it again. It’s that good.

I’m quite picky when it comes to memoirs and tend to gravitate towards those where I am able to either relate to the experiences of the author or connect with them in some way. While there are a plethora of memoirs out there, the reality is that very few of those memoirs are actually written from the perspective of someone who shares a similar background as myself — namely, a Chinese-American woman from an immigrant family who has struggled with identity and belonging her entire life. This is why, when I found out about Qian Julie Wang’s memoir Beautiful Country , I knew I absolutely had to pick this one up. This powerful memoir is exactly one of those rare gems that most closely encapsulates the immigrant experience that I grew up with. Though there are obvious differences between our circumstances in terms of how are families came to America (the titular “beautiful country” as directly translated from Chinese) — for example, my family immigrated here legally while Wang’s family ended up here illegally due to an expired visa — many of the struggles that Wang recounts from her childhood are ones that I’ve also experienced.

Wang tells her story starting from the perspective of her seven-year-old self, when she is told to put her most prized possessions into her grandparents’ storage unit in China so she could accompany her mother on a “flying machine” (literal translation of 飛機 or “airplane”) that eventually lands in a place called “beautiful country” (literal translation of 美國 or “America”). From the moment Wang and her mother step off the plane at JFK airport (New York) and are reunited with her father (who had gone to America two years earlier), her life is forever changed in ways that eventually shape who she becomes in adulthood. Though she didn’t know it at the time, leaving China for America meant that Wang would go from an environment where she was surrounded by extended family, unconditional love, and every comfort possible, to one where loneliness was a constant companion, familial love came with strings attached, and every day was a fight for survival at all levels (physically, mentally, emotionally). We witness Wang’s coming of age through the wide-eyed lens of a child forced to navigate a world she does not understand and where she was taught to put her head down, do as she was told, and endure whatever was thrown her way without complaint because that was the expectation of someone in her situation.

While in China, Wang’s parents were highly educated professionals, in America they were reduced to working in sweatshops and other low-paying jobs that allowed them to remain in the shadows, with the constant fear of their illegal status being discovered hanging over them. The stress of their new life in a foreign country where, despite their efforts to remain invisible, they are still largely unwelcomed, takes a toll on Wang’s parents and eventually leads to the fracturing of their family. Illegal status aside though, Wang’s struggles growing up as an immigrant child resonated deeply with me — from the humiliation of a tenuous living situation where there was little to no privacy, to not being able to afford the most basic of comforts that seemed to come easily to everyone else (ie: enough food for the table, a roof over our heads, clean clothes to wear to school); to being constantly told that, no matter how hard you work to fit in or how much you contribute to your community, you will never truly belong; to the bullying and racism, both subtle and direct, that becomes an inevitable part of the immigrant experience. For me, this book was difficult to read — not because of challenging subject matter or anything like that — but because of the familiarity of Wang’s experiences and the memories they brought back of my own childhood. One experience in particular had me near tears when I read it: the scene where, in fifth grade, Wang is summoned to her (white male) teacher’s desk one day and, shown an essay she had written and submitted, is essentially accused of plagiarism because the essay was “too well written” and the English was “too good” to have been written by her. Even though she told her teacher that she truly did write the essay and didn’t plagiarize, her status meant that she was not to be believed, so after that incident, Wang would deliberately include spelling and grammatical errors in all her essays to avoid having to endure a similar confrontation with her teacher in the future. This scene resonated with me in particular because this was a common experience for me throughout my entire elementary and middle school education: being told that something I wrote couldn’t possibly have been written by me because the English was “too good” and that I must have copied it from elsewhere. As a result, I also started deliberately including “errors” in my writing to avoid confrontation. Luckily, I later attended a high school and college that embraced diversity and eventually recognized my efforts (though the shaken confidence in how I view my writing is something that I still carry with me to this day).

This was truly a profound and emotional read for me, one that I know will stay with me for a long time to come. Even though reading this memoir brought back some unhappy memories for me, I appreciate the fact that a book like this one exists. While I am buoyed by the knowledge that our country has come a long way in terms of racial diversity and acceptance, at the same time, I am saddened by the obvious steps backwards that we as a society have also taken in this area, over the past few years especially. Now more than ever, we need books like this one that can hopefully help open people’s eyes to the plight that so many in our society experience — a timely read that I absolutely recommend!

Heartbreaking and raw, but also so important to read and know the story of Qian and so many others like her. Her memory of detail and honest writing really made you feel like you were there alongside her. She captured so well the agonizing choices that parents make when they want a better life for their families, and the difficulties they face once they are here. Sad and hard, but so good too.