I really like this autobiography, it was loving, endearing, hard to read at time but I loved Wang's humor and tenacity. I have no idea how her parents made it through all the hardships they came across but they endured. They kept making changes until they found what they wanted and acceptance, not in the United States but in Canada. I loved that they found treasure in little things and I loved that Wang found joy in the New York Public Library. I was sad about Marilyn and wish some how she was accepted by Wang's family, but alas she wasn't. What I really love is that after all Qian Julie Wang experience she not only became a lawyer but now a wonderful writer.
This is a wonderful read you will enjoy this story about Qian Julie Wang.

I want to thank Doubleday Books and NetGalley for an advance copy of this marvelous life adventure.

The inside story of an undocumented Chinese family living life in the shadows hoping to not be noticed at every step. Qian Julie traces her life from her childhood in China from relative middle class to becoming undocumented in the U.S. - beautiful country. After she and her parents’ time-limited visas expire, they remain in New York City living alongside other similar families in tight quarters barely able to survive. Hunger and hiding are the cornerstones of the author’s early years. This was an interesting read about the author’s life and how she achieved success. Not to take anything away from her personal story, but I wasn’t wowed by the writing style - it didn’t engage or captivate me with its words. There were numerous occasions where the Chinese comments/sentences weren't translated into English, which I though was odd - would have loved to have been able to understand them. Overall, a good window into the challenges of undocumented families. Many thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this early copy.

Many of us reading this book live in the United States - the land of the beautiful. It's easy for us to get caught up in our day-to-day lives and only when we read stories like this, it makes us pause.

Qian's father left China when she was just four years old to escape the torture from the community for being in a family that spoke the truth. He went to New York to find a better life for him, his wife and daughter.. On July 29, 1994, Qian was seven when the plane landed at JFK Airport and she followed the footsteps of her mother into a country where they had no rights, no medical care and no hope for legality.

The family of three lived in one room with a shared kitchen in the house. At night, she heard gun shots and was told to trust no one and always lock the doors. She said, "Our kitchen contained more cockroaches than food." She was always hungry and lonely. She was raised with the fear of being deported in a city that "smelled like pee." In the winter, it was freezing inside and out.

Her parents were professional educators in China but now in NY, they had bottom-of-the-barrel jobs. This memoir takes us through her life with stories that she remembers at a young age with her friends, cat, and inspiration from the library. At nine years old, she set a goal to someday go to law school to help other immigrants in the country have a better life.

The stories are simple yet powerful. It's one that will stay with you for a long time as you think about conditions for immigrants - some good and others not so great with the so-called dream. Yet, she learned how to manage the system and make it to top with her strong determination and self confidence.

My thanks to Qian Julie Wang, Doubleday Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read this advanced copy to be released on September 7, 2021.

Thank you, Qian Julie Wang, for allowing us a glimpse into your life as a Chinese immigrant. I was touched by your ability to achieve personally and academically in the poverty you grew up in! Your story is one that needs to be told. I wish you had included more about your life after moving to Canada, and how your life changed in those years before you left for college and law school. I would love to have read more about your academic experience as an Asian immigrant studying in American universities.

Thank you, NetGalley for allowing me to read this touching memoir.

I'm not one to read or enjoy memoirs, but Beautiful Country was a powerful and fulfilling read. This book follows the story of Qian's family as undocumented immigrants in New York City. It starts out with Qian as a young child leaving China with her mother to join her father in America. One of the most powerful aspects of the novel was Qian's ability to accurately capture the voice of her as a child. You could feel the anxiety and confusion in many places with the fear of being deported. The struggle that Qian's family went through with different jobs, racism and poverty is heartbreaking and unforgettable. This is such an important and timely read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for
my ARC.

Raw and compelling, Qian Julie Wang’s memoir, Beautiful Country, was a great read. Qian takes us through her childhood, starting in China, where her well-educated parents and extended family members suffer under Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Her father leaves for the United States, called Mei Guo, a name that translates literally to Beautiful Country. She and her mother follow two years later.

Arriving in the US at the age of seven, Qian and her family live in startlingly deprived conditions. She learns quickly to trust no one, living in a state of constant anxiety, hunger, and fear of deportation. Always hyper vigilant, she becomes a student of human behavior while she longs to simply not stand out. Even school provides little shelter and support for young Qian, with only the occasional teacher who can look past her smelly and dirty exterior to see the sharp mind and fierce will inside her. Her family eventually finds a more stable life, but the trauma and scars from their years of poverty and fear are not easily shed or mended.

Reading this book made me wonder - how many children and young adults like Qian are out there right now? How much human potential is being overlooked and wasted? I volunteer for a local offshoot of Feeding America, loading groceries once a week into the cars of the disabled and working poor. Every time I see a child in one of those cars, I will think of Qian and her hunger for both physical and emotional nourishment. This is a book you will think about for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for access to an electronic advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Beautiful Country is a wonderfully written memoir, one that generates compassion and understanding for a hard lived experience that readers should embrace. This is an important memoir, one that will I think be well received in many book clubs and memoir and social justice reading circles (as it should be) and it brings to light that illeigal immigrants come from many backgrounds and there are persistent stressors living a life meant to bring about a better life for children all while introducing children to this strain and pressures to be invisible and feelings of being persistently unseen.

There is a lot to explore in this book and I think it offers a really valuable discussion of identity, racism and trauma and bias, and also highlights the extreme physical and mental impact of stress and hardship, particularly persistent stress. The sense of otherness and indeed being invisible is powerful, even as this book aims to generate a visible written and visual presence. The title alone evokes a feeling of sadness for how dreams of a better life can be so beautiful but hard to achieve.

Recommended for those open to themes on immigrant identity, trauma and stress, and for readers seeking a personal examination of undocumented youth.

Book: Beautiful Country
Author: Qian Julie Wang
Rating: 5 Out 5 Stars

I would like to thank the publisher, Doubleday, for providing with an ARC.

You know, it’s been awhile since I’ve written a review for a memoir. Whenever we think of undocumented immigrants, we tend to think Mexican. Well, that’s not always the case as this books goes to show. Qian and her family are from China. In China, they seemed to have it all. Her parents are very educated professionals-both of them being professors. Qian is smart and fearless. They seem to have it all. However, Qian’s father is drawn to the idea of American freedom. He leaves his family behind in China, thinking that they will soon join him. Years pass before the Qian and her mother are able to join him.

It is from here that we get a true picture of what life is like for so many undocumented people. The fear of being discovered keeps them in poverty. We see the family take jobs of very little pay with employers who don’t ask questions. Qian is put into a school that doesn’t also ask questions. They also live in pretty bad living conditions since it is the only thing they can afford. We see them live with hunger, go without so many things, and try to make sense of this place they have moved to. We see the family constantly looking over their shoulder, keeping items that can be moved in a hurry, and being wary of people who are not Chinese. While Qian doesn’t really keep playing up the fear of being discovered, it comes across the page. Whatever the family does, you, as the reader, will feel that fear and worry right along with the family. I love how Qian is able to make this come across the page. To me, that is the mark of a very talented and gifted writer.

I really enjoyed Qian a lot. She really did have a rough childhood. She deals with her parents fighting and blaming each other and her for their hardships, her mother’s illness, and teaching herself a new language. Though all of this we see that she never gives up. When put into a special class for not knowing how to speak English, we see Qian take matters into her own hands. She sits down with picture books and teaches herself English. Why? She wants to go back to her old room. We see books and PBS become her friends. Yes, she does have human friends, but it is through books and PBS that she finds real comfort. I may have gotten more than a little excited by her reading choices, because she read books that I grew up reading. We also see that she does want to be normal kid. She wants the toys they have and a pet-even though she really doesn’t voice these things because she knows her family can’t afford it. She is also very determined. We see her strive for a better education and to learn new things. However, when she does achieve these things, people do question her and laugh at her dreams. Just based on the writing in this book alone, I would venture to say that she proves them wrong.

The writing….Oh man…The writing…While the actual prose does come across the page as being very simple, it’s not. It’s actually far from it. I could tell right away that each word was carefully thought out. We see Qian’s life come to life with these words. While I was reading this, I found myself completely immersed in the writing. You can feel the excitement coming off the page the first time Qian has McDonalds, feel the embarrassment when she is caught “shopping” by a classmate, and feel the longing for things she wants. You feel the pain and worry that the family has to deal with every day. I am still in awe that this is the author’s first book. I really do hope she writes more books in the near future.

I really did have a great time with this one and I am glad that Doubleday reached out to me for an ARC. Without them, I would have never discovered this well written and thought out book.

This book comes out on September 7, 2021.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/coblx3KQ0vM

It's really hard to rate and review memoirs in my opinion. This is clearly a story that Qian needed to write for herself and for her family, and I think people that come from immigrant backgrounds can find themselves in it wherever they have come from or moved to.
I like that there are Chinese words sprinkled throughout. For example she will say something like "We came from Zhong Guo--China." And then only call it "Zhong Guo" from then on, which is great! Sometimes there are sentences in Chinese that are then followed up in English which is also great. But then there are times where whole conversations between two people are in Chinese without any kind of translation. Even though I know this book wasn't written for me, I feel like I missed out on some things and dynamics between the family that I would have liked to see as an outside reader.
Overall, I'm glad Qian got to finally tell her story. I hope it was therapeutic for her and she is able to move forward from some of her childhood trauma. The United States should be a place for everyone and it's sad that anyone has to hide or struggle in the way this family did.
Thank you to netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review

Beautiful Country was a “can’t put it down” reading experience. An expertly written debut memoir. The author’s words painted images that I could easily imagine as well as a evoking a variety of deep emotions. I admire her strength, courage, and willingness to be vulnerable in sharing with the world a difficult and traumatic piece of her childhood as an undocumented immigrant family in NYC.

China, Chinese-culture, Chinese-customs, Chinese-languages, Canada, Brooklyn, narrative, nonfiction, immigrants, library, Mandarin, undocumented, family-dynamics, ambitions, culture-of-fear, sweat-shops, contemporary*****

She is the unsuspecting passenger in her parents' journey and it takes many years for her to make it her own. In China her parents were respected professors, but in Brooklyn and NYC Chinatown they are *ignorant* because they have so little English, do not speak Cantonese, and must work in the sweatshops for little money and in such awful conditions. But for a girl of seven it is all incomprehensible and lonely. Even after she teaches herself to read English and then is introduced to the wonder that is libraries. Not all of the problems are caused by others or even their own beliefs about luck, as a major hurdle occurs when mother becomes gravely ill. But mother is also an overcomer and is able to return to academia when Qian is just starting middle school and they resettle into the warm welcome that is Canada. Spoiler: Qian does go to Yale law.
The last Chinese immigrant I've read about is Patriot Number One three years ago.
I requested and received a free temporary e-book copy from Doubleday Books via NetGalley. Thank you!
I will be getting the audio.

This is an extraordinary memoir. The author writes about her childhood as an illegal immigrant who came with her family from China to America (“Mei Guo” or “Beautiful Country”) in 1994 at age 7. She manages to recreate her past without any adult hindsight coloring her impressions. Thus, we can fully appreciate her confusion, fear, and the enormous challenges - including the language barrier - as she tries to make her way in her new country.

Qian’s father continuously warned her not to talk to any strangers - especially not police officers - and not to tell anyone she wasn’t born in America. But it was clear they were perceived as “other” nevertheless. Almost every day, they were called “chinks” by passersby in the street. Quian writes: “…. in the vacuum of anxiety that was undocumented life, fear was gaseous: it expanded to fill our entire world until they were all we could breathe.”

Back in China, her parents were professionals - her father taught English literature and her mother taught math. In New York, however, without papers, they had to take any menial jobs they could find. Qian’s mother found work in various sweatshops that literally paid pennies; Qian’s “Ba Ba” with his English skills was able, after an initial stint in a Chinese laundry, to find a job as a clerk for an immigration lawyer.

Qian went to school, but lacking English, was put into a class for “special needs” children, and left to learn English on her own. She indeed taught herself, availing herself of the picture books that enabled her to associate words with objects. Soon she was back in the regular classroom and outshining her peers, especially after she discovered the public library.

At home, with the low wages her parents brought in and the stress of poverty, life was a struggle in other ways. She writes, “America was a living lesson in hunger. Our kitchen contained more cockroaches than food. . . . Hunger was a constant, reliable friend in Mei Guo. She came second only to loneliness. Hunger slept only when I did, and sometimes not even then.”

Qian decided while in fifth grade that she wanted to become a lawyer. She reasoned that lawyers made good money, and plus, both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall proved that lawyers didn’t have to be men, and didn’t have to be white. Her teacher laughed at her, and along with other adults tried to discourage her, but she would not be deterred.

The family finally found a path to citizenship by moving to Canada. The story mostly ends there, although Qian adds at the end that she eventually made her way back to the U.S. She attended Swarthmore College, Yale Law School, and then landed a job at a top law firm.

In May 2016, “just shy of eight thousand days after I first landed I New York City…” she finally became a U.S. citizen. But in the shadows of herself the frightened and traumatized little girl remained. She wrote this book in part to unburden herself from the secrets of her past, so that they would lose power over her present and future.

She said that she also wrote this book for Americans and immigrants everywhere: “The heartbreak of one immigrant is never that far from that of another.” But most of all, she writes in the preface, “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.”

Evaluation: While I have read a number of immigrant memoirs, this one stands out for the ways in which it seems unfiltered by the benefit of adult hindsight. Those who want a good look at what immigrant children go through should not miss this poignant story.

I thought this was an excellently written memoir. What an incredible story of hardship. The story of a young lady in the US with her parents who were illegally in the U.S.intentionally overstaying their visas. Not an easy life. Who would have thought that children would be without enough food here in the land of plenty? Really gives one a hard look at those who immigrate and how hard they work to just stay alive and to thrive under difficult conditions. How hard they tried to stay under the radar and remain invisible to the authorities. Well worth reading, I enjoyed learning about this woman. I look forward to her next book!

Beautiful Country is what the US is called in Mandarin--at least by people who haven't emigrated here yet. Qian and her mother join Qian's dad in America in 1994, when Qian is 7. Her dad was critical of the Chinese government and wanted to be free. Unfortunately freedom didn't pay well, and the family was crushingly poor. Qian's mom, a math and computer professor in China, gets her first job in a sweatshop, bringing Qian along. Even as Qian gains fluency in English, life and school are hard. Her teacher doesn't believe she's writing her own essays, and she's told to change her clothes more often. Qian would wear the same pair of shoe for a year--starting with them being too large, and ending the year with her toes sticking out. She faced more than one kind of hunger growing up.

This isn't a tell-all memoir, and there is little blame placed on her parents. Wang is empathetic, even when she's disappointed. (content warning about incidents with a cat). I'm not doing it justice, so I'll just say it's a beautiful telling of a hard life that thankfully ends in triumph. I hope her parents are proud!

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. This book is about a young girl at the age of seven left China with her parents and came to the United States. Her parents worked in sweat shops and had very little money. When Qiang started school they went on a field trip to a library, which she loved. This book was well written.

Qian has few moments of happiness. Her life is burdened by adult advice to stay invisible in her new country, to keep her eyes down. Her illegal status weighs heavily; her poverty is a prison. Her one joy is reading and a cat whom her father despises. Her parents’ misery is hers; they seem to share two sides of silence or screams. She suffers from stomach problems. She is bullied and at times becomes a bully. Qian Julie Wang’s memoir is a challenging read with its oppressive atmosphere and tone. It is an immigrant’s story that encourages the reader to hope for some light at the end of her tunnel.

I’ve read so many memoirs of trauma and I am amazed by each- The Glass Castle, Educated, Hillbilly Elegy. I work in mental health and I grew up with trauma, you read to know you aren’t alone and you read to make yourself feel not quite as bad as the author you are reading. So Beautiful Country was suggested to me. I read it in a day. I’ve never read from anyone undocumented persons point of view, let alone a child. This was sad and raw and real. This is the answer when you hear people ask why come to America illegally. Because what they are coming from is way worse. This is a chance. I mean to read what the author and her mother went through for unemployment while she was a child. The fear drilled in her that they could be deported at any moment. How scary and traumatic for a child. The absolute poverty they must have been in- it’s unimaginable. I think everyone should read this- the more you can understand and see where people are coming from and what they’ve been through, the more we can all recognize that we are all humans. As Americans we can’t just write off people here illegally- they are human too. It breaks my heart to think of the conditions people live in and go through just to be here.
A well written book that will stick with me.

My thanks to Qian Julie Wang, Doubleday Books, and NetGalley for the ARC.

What an extraordinary story of courage, determination, and resilience! I'll admit I found Beautiful Country to be harrowing to read at times. It documents the heartbreak and strife of an undocumented family as they attempted to fit into an unbelievably strange new life in America. I can't imagine a childhood shaped by severe poverty, and the constant fear that comes with being undocumented. It certainly opened my eyes! Just imagine attempting to fit into life in a new country when you are unable to speak or understand the language. Imagine being hungry every single day. In so many ways this was a heartbreaking story, yet it led to success due to Qian's unwavering strength and her determination to never give up.

Surely there is a better way to deal with immigration in this country!

“Well, isn’t it nice to know, Qian Qian, that we’re not alone?” But I didn’t think it was nice at all. It didn’t seem right that there were many more people out there feeling alone and homesick and hungry in the same moments when we were feeling those things. Hundreds of lonely people, I figured, was far worse than three lonely people.”

TITLE—Beautiful Country
AUTHOR—Qian Julie Wang
PUBLISHED—September 2021

GENRE—memoir, nonfiction
SETTING—the story begins in China and continues in America (in 1994, when the MC moves to the US, she is 7 years old)
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—immigration, undocumented immigrant experience, Chinese-American identity, fear, poverty, oppression, corruption, exploitation, trauma, family, community, coming of age

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️

“I did not need to turn to Ba Ba to know that he would have no questions. He asked fewer and fewer questions in America. Somehow, by leaving China, Ba Ba had grown more Chinese, starting to adopt our government’s silly ideas about how asking questions was bad and disrespectful. He took on the form of what America expected of us: docile, meek. He had even started teaching me the importance of keeping my head down, of not asking any questions or drawing any attention, seemingly forgetting that he had taught me the exact opposite in China.”

There are an infinite number of individuals differing perspectives and life experiences and reading is a great way to expose yourself to as many of them as possible and this book certainly did that for me. This book taught me a lot and I’m so glad I got the chance to read it. ❤️

A couple observations:
- I couldn’t get over the fact that the author and I are the same age. So while she was describing what her life was like as a seven-year-old, in the same country, at the same time, as I was growing up as a seven-year-old… it was really surreal. Especially when she and I actually had a lot of similar life experiences (due to both of our family’s extreme poverty, obviously not bc I have any idea what it’s like to be an undocumented immigrant) but her story about the hello kitty pencil, the polly pockets, and the tamagotchi, and her experiences at school with lunch vouchers and becoming a bully in order to compensate for her lack of self esteem due to the traumas of poverty in her friend group, and her experience of the public library as a huge sanctuary… There was so much I related to on such a deep level! 😅

- I was a little confused about how I was supposed to feel about the fact that the author seemed to feel that NYC was her “real” home, and she ended up falling in love with NYC/America (where she attended college and eventually lived permanently), when she and her family had ended up needing to move to Canada in order to be safe… I wish I could have gotten a bit more clarity on why this was from the book… perhaps it was there and I missed it.

“Ma Ma turned to me and instructed, “Bie shuo hua.” She would say this more and more to me during our time to come in Mei Guo. Be silent. Say nothing. My voice no longer had a place.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // trauma, poverty, animal death, suicidal thoughts, sexual harassment, animal cruelty, vomit

Further Reading—
- Zami, by Audre Lorde
- To Hair and Back, by Rhonda Eason
- The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio—TBR

This was such a fantastic memoir. Beautifully written and one I won’t forget. I love reading about others lives and how they overcome hardships. This book wasn’t on my radar but I’m so glad I had the chance to read it.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my advanced ebook copy.