I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest reviews and opinion. This was a very compelling read that opens your eyes to immigrant life in America. I did enjoy this book and it was different from my typical reading patterns of psychological thrillers. I'm very glad I read it and it will stay with me for quite some time.

Qian Julie Wang's memoir of her family coming into America as undocumented citizens is beautifully written. The story was difficult, sad, inspiring, and just plain smart. It made me love the author and identify with her experience.

Thank you for the advanced reader of this memior.

Part of me wanted to hold off on reviewing this simply because I’m still digesting it, but the other half of me decided I will probably continue to think about it for a while.

Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang pulls the reader into the life of seven-year-old Qian, an undocumented child living in New York City. I think what made this memoir powerful was reading about her life through the eyes of a child; seeing how America appeared to Qian, how her parents interacted with one another, how impactful their words and actions were on Qian, and especially Qian’s experience in school. The educator in me was heartbroken at many of the experiences Qian had in school. The human in me was heartbroken at many of Qian’s experiences in life.

I really enjoy reading memoirs because I love having a glimpse into other people’s lives and experiences. This memoir was no different. I found myself longing to read more about Qian’s life at the end of the book. It was heartbreaking, educating, and extremely vulnerable. I would recommend this memoir not only if you like memoirs, but simply to allow yourself the opportunity to learn from someone else’s perspective and experience.

Special thanks to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

What a wonderful book. Easily 5 stars! This book is about the author herself, a Chinese immigrant.. With the explosion of books (memoirs) that have come out, pick this one! You will laugh, cry, and love this book. I loved everything about this book and will not soon forget it.

What a powerful book! I'm so thankful for books like these that pull at my heartstrings. You will love this book! And I am not a big fan of memoirs, like I said, but I cannot advocate more for this book! Truly beautiful!

What an eye-opening, shocking story this book will be for most of us who read it. Being undocumented, intentionally invisible, never quite fitting it but never quite wanting to go “home” because that place where we started is no longer home. Nearly impossible to understand or relate, until an author like Qian Julie Wang writes such a strong, moving memoir that we are forced to almost live her life; we can’t turn away. We feel the pain and the shame and the anger and the hope. Author Qian Julie’s use of the perspective of her younger self makes the story all the more fascinating and at times heartbreaking. In some ways a child is a child is a child. But no child should have to endure what she did, to feel what she felt.

Most of us go about our lives oblivious to how cruel and impersonal, how unwelcoming, our behavior is to those who are different and are trying to find their place, to blend in while remaining true to themselves. We think, “You’re lucky to be in this Beautiful Country.” And that’s true, but author Qian Julie gives us the depth and the background and the reality of the struggle of another version of the American family.

Thanks to Doubleday, Penguin Random House for providing an advance copy of Beautiful Country via NetGalley for my honest review. It was an honor and a joy to read this heartfelt memoir and I recommend it without hesitation. All opinions are my own.

Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang tells the story of Qian and her parents leaving China and moving to the United States of America as undocumented immigrants. The story tells of all the things that Qian had in China growing up versus what she and her family struggled for when they arrived in America. It tells of the sweatshop jobs that her parents received here. Although her mom was a computer programmer, she had to do different remedial jobs to survive. Before Qian began school and after school, hours would help her parents work in the sweatshops. Qian had to teach herself how to read, write, and talk English when she started school. It was not long before she discovered the library, and her love of books began. What did Qian and her parents do to become legal citizens of America? And how long of a journey did it take? Read Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang today to find out.
Bridgett R. Veltman

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of this book. Beautiful Country is heartbreakingly beautiful. The author, Qian Julie Wang, shares vulnerably her childhood of leaving China, a country she loved and the warmth of family, and moving to the United States. Her stories of struggle, hardship, relationships, and racism, tear at your soul. Her resilience and triumphs fill you with hope. Wang's memoir is a must read for anyone who has had the privilege of belonging their entire life, who does not see the pain and trauma of being an immigrant in the United States.

Beautiful Country by Julie Qian Wang

320 Pages
Publisher: Doubleday Books
Release Date: September 7, 2021

Nonfiction, Biographies, Memoirs, Multicultural Interest, Chinese, Immigrants, Dreamers

When Qian was five, she and her mother arrive in the United States to live with her father. Since they are undocumented, they must live in the shadows. They work in sweatshops and their home is furnished with finds from the street. She has a hard time fitting in with her school mates since she lives in poverty.

The author describes in detail her life from arriving to the United States until she enters eighth grade. Her life was hard and full of hardships but had moments of joy. She shows how difficult life can be for undocumented people. If you are interested in how difficult life can be for immigrants, you should read this book.

A book of hard truths about being in our country without the proper paperwork and how that stress can both make an individual strong or broken with paranoia and fear. It is about the courage of a mother and the terror of a father who are both at home in a country and utter strangers to it. And it is about the bravery of a child in a land she cannot comprehend surrounded by people she fears to trust trying to find her way. This is a book that puts you firmly in the shoes of a child refugee thrust into a culture foreign to her. Recommend.

This was a painful book to read but always with her light shining through so much tragedy and prejudice. Worth the read and gave me, a grandchild of immigrants, more insight into their situation, though country of origin was different

Most of us have a “typical” American immigrant story in our heads: members of the family leave their home country because conditions have become intolerable there, and though they go through many challenges in the US, they eventually work their way to success.
And, it is true, Beautiful Country hits all these notes. But Qian Julie Wang’s memoir viscerally shows us how devastatingly hard it can be to leave the home culture that envelops you to enter a country where not only are you struggling to understand the language and culture, but your very presence is deemed illegal.
The theme of danger winds in and around this whole narrative, threatening to choke off the life of the family, especially for Qiang, through whose young eyes we see this story. She begins, “My story starts decades before my birth.” Her father lived through China’s Cultural Revolution, and the treachery and violence of that period marked him for the rest of his life. In adulthood, he became an English literature professor, but he found the constant state thought police intolerable, and it’s no wonder he decided to emigrate to Mei Guo—literally Beautiful Country – the United States. He traveled there and overstayed his visa, and after two years of pleading with officials, Qian and her mother were able to obtain a visa and do the same.
Qian is only seven years old at the time and doesn’t understand that they are leaving her loving grandparents and extended family for good. The section on her life in China is short, but it so touchingly describes her happy life dancing with her father, being tenderly cared for by her mother when she had the chickenpox, and being spoiled by her relatives that readers’ hearts ache when we realize that she will have to leave this life forever.
Her parents are haunted by their own demons, and are often unwilling or unable to explain their choices and their new life to her. All she has to go by are comments from relatives. One says that the US is beautiful, but they don’t treat Chinese people well, and another cries that they shoot people on the street. Another hears that everyone starves here, and yet another has heard that the roads are covered with money and gold. Qian herself knows the US is a place where people eat hamburgers all the time. She had only had a hamburger once in Beijing and had been scared by the statue of a “a white clown with red hair, a giant red mouth, and big red shoes,” otherwise known as Ronald McDonald.
When she arrives in the US, she doesn’t find much to assuage her fears as the family takes up residence in a single room in a Brooklyn apartment. Her parents don’t have a good way to gauge which behaviors are most dangerous, and her mother makes the two of them sit in a dark room in the evenings, far from the window, as they wait for the father to come home from work. If Qian moves a little too close to the light coming from the window, her mother shouts, “Wei xian! Dangerous.” Her mother tells her that the popping sounds they heard outside were gunshots and if the shooter sees that the two of them are home, they might shoot them as well. Qian’s father isn’t afraid to turn on the lights, but he has also impressed upon his daughter about how dangerous it is to draw attention to oneself, and lives in constant fear of being deported.
Through young Qian’s eyes, we see how this fear not only constricts the family’s movement and participation in life but also how it severely limits the kinds of jobs her parents can get and how the series of low-wage, low-status jobs traps them in grinding and demeaning poverty.
I don’t want to leave you feeling that this book is all about a downward spiral. Though the learning process was incredibly hard, I believe each member of the family learned to cope and adapt and find little pockets of joy in their lives, and by the end we know that Qian has found her way in this world and is working to help others who are traveling the same path.
Some of the promotional blurbs are comparing this memoir to Tara Westover’s Educated, and I’m happy to report that Wang’s parents are not the dangerous and deluded souls described in Westover’s book. And yet, Wang’s childhood was also marked by trauma from parents that were so grief-stricken, overwhelmed and displaced that they often weren’t able to help their daughter in her struggles and often relied on her to be their xiao yi sheng, their “little doctor,” or on-call therapist.
All in all, this book is a fascinating read. Wang’s descriptions are so vivid and her explanations are so apt that we readers feel that we are living alongside with her and developing a deep understanding of what immigrant families like hers are going through.

What an incredible heart wrenching story of immigrating to the USA. Truly disturbing how educated people are treated when they try to find a better life. One can only hope they encounter more people with empathy and understanding, than narrow minded bigotry. Great read, will make you cry, laugh and cringe.
Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read this powerful memoir, all opinions in this review are my own.

This is the story of young Qian who came to America with her mother to join their father and start a life in a new country. The culture shock is well documented as the family transitions from the comfort that they had with their careers and provisions in China to being undocumented, poverty-stricken, and fearful in America. Qian struggles with school and the transition to a new language, new students, and a new process to fit in to. Illness in the family brings new fears of being discovered as undocumented residents. This was an interesting perspective to read and try to better understand the experience of starting over in a new country.

This book is an eye opening look at one immigrant family's life. Wow, it's hard to read, but so hopeful, too. It really illustrates what it's like for new immigrants to our country, and how our country does not make it easy for them, either. Julie's writing is beautiful and the stories she tells are at times fun, and at times heartbreaking. I felt like I really got to know Qian Qian and her parents. If you have any interest at all in the immigrant experience, I recommend this book!

I loved this book! Usually, I do not read autobiographies as they tend to lean towards "look at me and how great I am". Beautiful Country does not take this path. It is beautifully written telling the author's story as a child born in China and coming to the United States with her mother. Qian's father had arrived into the US a few years prior. Reading about a child's perspective about coming to a new country not knowing the language or customs was enlightening and refreshing. Upon finishing the book when Qian is in middle school made me wish for a follow-up as she progresses through her school years.

The book is not always uplifting as there were biases/bullying even amongst these of Chinese heritage such as Cantonese versus Mandarin. Many times we don't think of what a child is going through when the parents uproot the family for a better life.

This would be a very good book club book.
Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced copy.

What an amazing story this was - a true testament to the power and resiliency of the human spirit shown not only by the author herself but by her parents as well and in general, all immigrants! Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free electronic version of this advanced copy in return for an honest review.
This memoir truly opened my eyes to what it’s like to be an immigrant in a foreign country. Starting over from scratch in a country where you don’t speak the language, don’t understand the customs, and aren’t welcomed in general would be overwhelming to most people. In Qian’s case, she and her family were undocumented and illegal immigrants which added a whole other layer of stress and fear to their lives. They lived in extreme poverty and the constant terror of deportation. Qian and her parents left behind a relatively good life in China. Her parents were highly educated people with good jobs. But it was the lure of freedom that motivated Qian’s father to immigrate to New York City with Qian and her mother following a few years later. Because her parents were illegal, it prevented them from securing decent jobs and they ended up working in sweat shops for menial wages. Not only is Qian’s adjustment to American life difficult, but she also has to deal with her parents unhappiness with their lives and each other. Yet even with all this stress and pressure placed upon her, Qian manages to find her own path and confidence with who she is.
After reading Qian's story, I definitely came away with a greater understanding and admiration for all immigrants, documented as well as undocumented. It also served as a good reminder of how fortunate most of us truly are.

Beautiful Country is a first-person immigrant memoir that dives deeply into the author’s experience in coming to the US from China. The author presents the reader with detailed, vivid descriptions through the eyes of a child: bewildering and novel scenes that provide context. The physical descriptions and discoveries of the child remind us that we take the commonplace for granted, assuming it's a mundane backdrop and forgetting the mystery, even fear, that may be evoked in one who is unfamiliar.

As the author moves through novel experiences, she becomes acquainted with her new world and struggles to make sense of what is normal and what is different. She learns what to show openly and what must be masked. She grows older and more savvy, yet extreme fear surfaces. These may seem irrational in some sense; yet they arise from her personal experiences as well as those of the adults close to her. How is she to learn who and what to trust?

The author, as she approaches adulthood, decides that money solves problems and decides to become a lawyer. Teachers and other adults laugh at her. Although this is not all laid out for us in the book, I took to heart this thought, applicable to many: “But I clutched it [the dream, the goal] hard and close, carrying it against my chest like a hidden compass.”

Qian Julie Wang gives us an insightful memoir that shed lights on the immigrant experience. Her vivid descriptions and sensitive portrayals of people and experiences allow the reader to immerse themselves into the world she has moved through to become who she is today.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an advance copy of the book for my enjoyment.

Thank you to Doubleday Books and Netgalley for an early digital copy in exchange for an honest review!

This memoir is a solid debut. Wang chronicles her childhood as an undocumented Chinese immigrant in New York after her family’s initial visas expire. Like many before and after them, they come with the hope that America will live up to its Chinese name, “Mei Guo,” meaning “Beautiful Country,” but the years end up being full of harsh difficulties as they grapple with poverty and racism, placing a strain on their relationships with one another. Wang describes the eclectic jobs she and her parents had to make ends meet, her experience acclimating to school without knowing English, and her encounters with various figures ranging from those who were cruel to compassionate. She does it all with such vivid concrete detail that you feel you are right there with her in decades past.

In addition to the transportive description, what makes the narrative so compelling is that Wang powerfully captures her perspective as a child: young Qian is naive and innocent, but as the memoir continues, there is a growing somberness with each memory and each realization as she recognizes the bleak circumstances her family are in. Yet, despite the many heartbreaks she feels, her bright and inquisitive nature remains, as well as her determination to prove the naysayers wrong in her pursuit of learning, in finding what she can truly call her own. It was clear that reading books was one of Qian’s primary solaces, teaching her the language and providing her with escape and I enjoyed the specific references to the books that helped shape her understanding of herself.

I loved how while the book remained chronologically structured, each chapter was a short exploration on one specific theme or realization, almost like a vignette? Many of these chapters feel sort of “complete” on their own and come around full circle by the end.

One can imagine that telling her story must have been so cathartic and challenging for Wang, since these are feelings and anecdotes she was always told she would need to keep secret for so long. Reading her story gave me helpful insight into the experiences that others like her go through in their pursuit of a better life when the odds seem stacked against them.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

Beautiful Country is a memoir written by a Chinese woman brought to the US on a Visa that expires, deeming them illegal.

Qian relives the memories of the poverty and problems they encountered by being illegal. While her parents are highly educated and had successful careers in China, they came to the US due to political pressures. Now, in the US, they are working jobs for the undereducated and barely surviving.

Qian starts school in the US and has limited English. She starts to watch PBS and reading books and her world opens up and educates her.

This book is a heartbreaking memoir of a difficult childhood on a multitude of levels and as you are reading it, you know that there are possibly millions out there with the same issues.

"Beautiful Country" by Qian Julie Wang is a memoir about Wang's move to the United States as a young child and how she navigates childhood and adolescence as impoverished, undocumented immigrant. Wang and her parents endure equal struggles to adapt to a new life in America; a country that they learn doesn't actually want them. Wang's parents fight for her to get equal access to an education, which is one the main things that can provide for her, as their immigration status has reduced them to taking underpaid, dangerous jobs that are seemingly unknown to everyday New Yorkers. As Wang increasingly establishes her independence and adapts to a new life, her mother unravels and relies on her more and more for support that she can not provide. Wang's writing tells this heart-wrenching, yet hopeful story, in a way that draws the reader in for more. I really loved this book.