This one disappointed me. There are a lot of new memoirs out on immigrant life and I had high expectations for this one. . Qian Wang immigrated illegally to NYC with her parents who were both professors in China. In the US they held menial jobs and lived in squalor. Qian was initially put in special education because of her poor English but by middle school she was attending a selective magnet school in Chelsea. The harsh conditions cause fighting within her family. An unhappy family coupled with poverty and fear of deportation made for a depressing story. This might have been better if Wang had covered more of her life than just her elementary school years because obviously she experienced success at some point in time. For me it was ok at best. I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I tried reading Beautiful Country, but it didn't grab me. I don't know if it was the mood I was in or the style. I'll have to try another time since I do think it has potential.

Qin Julia Wang's Beautiful Country is truly a one-of-a-kind memoir and I couldn't recommend it to everyone who wants to learn more about immigrant narratives. Following the footsteps of authors such as Patricia Engel's latest novel, Infinite Country, this memoir moved me. As a young girl, I could relate to Wang's love for reading books in the library (and the fear of book stores), her struggles to adjust to life in the US after her parents were from China. While she does not explicitly delve deeper into the political environment that her family faced during the Cultural Revolution, it is clear that the socio-political environment has affected her worldview.

The most touching moments in this novel are surrounding Wang and her endearing relationship with her mother. Throughout the memoir, it is clear that Wang sees her mother as an inspiration, who in spite of facing numerous challenges, is both resilient and resourceful in her nature. The precarity of Wang's situation was moving - not knowing if she could ever be deported if it was found that her family was illegally staying in the US. I think what I loved the most about this book is that it touches on the question of how we see refugees/migrants in our climate political climate globally. There are currently debates on the placement of Afgan refugees, which is causing debates on national media sphere.

Overall, I loved Wang's memoir and would happily teach it as well!

It’s extremely difficult for a memoir to genuinely sound like a novel, or even more, a thriller. The books that spring to mind immediately are The Glass Castle, Educated, and The Sound of Gravel. Quian Julie Wang begins her story in 1994 when her family arrived at JFK. Undocumented, or “hei” meaning ‘in the dark’. That is the jumping off point of her journey as a dreamer. She begins by pointing out how the Obama Administration was a double edged sword for her and those like her and takes us on her journey growing up in an America where she didn’t really exist, eventually becoming a citizen in the land she’d almost always called home.

This is a beautifully written memoir of Qian's childhood in the Beautiful Country, America, after her family fled China under Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. It's a difficult read, as all stories of extreme poverty are. Seeing it through a child's eyes doesn't make it easier. There are bright spots, and, while it basically ends while she is still in her childhood, we do see where she ends up later in life. There are some stories that should remind us to be careful with our words and attitudes; children often live down to the expectations you are setting for them. Fortunately, the author was tenacious and resilient to live up to her own expectations.

Beautiful Country is a moving, must-read, vivid account of Qian Julie Wang's immigration experience as told to the readers by the author's young self (ages 5-11, then jumps to adulthood at the very end). The heartbreaking story describes in detail the losses she suffered to come to the USA from China: loss of family (grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins), loss of friends, loss of sense of belonging and home. She also details the losses she experienced once she was here: her loss of confidence due to criticism from her parents, teachers and other influential adults, her loss of worthiness when she feels dirty, poor, ugly, fat or smelly, her loss of sense of self when she thinks she is only good for bringing good "luck" or being a mini-therapist to her mother, and her loss of beloved possessions, especially her pet cat due to cultural differences and superstitions. The book plainly shows what most US-born citizens take for granted and what most do not understand when they see others who are trying to become citizens as they seek better lives for themselves and their future families. It is truly tragic that more isn't done to support those who are willing and able to contribute to society, to become "legal" as they seek the difficult road to citizenship. Qian's parents were professors of math and literature in China, but here, they and their 7 year old daughter had to work in sweatshops just to survive another day. There should be a path for professionals to continue their work once here in the USA. I had a friend from Vietnam, whose father was a medical doctor in his country, but unable to easily translate that in to a license to practice here in the USA, so he had to take jobs that were far below his education and professional levels to support his family here. Although I believe this is an important read and intimate view into the lives many immigrants face as they try to become citizens of the USA, I did find at times that the book was difficult to read because although it was vivid and detailed, sometimes it was unnecessarily so, often repetitive or including details that didn't add and often detracted from the story (too many poop/toilet jokes/detailed stories and too many analogies that don't seem to fit the situation). It was also at times too simplistic as it was told from the viewpoint of mostly from her 5-11 year old self, with an ending that really jumped to her present life, with only a couple paragraphs minimally describing her journey from Canada (where she and her parents moved to during her 6th grade year) back to the USA. I was left wondering WHY she decided to move back to the USA, when from her story, it seemed that the welcoming Canada felt more like "home" as than the "beautiful country" (USA) who never embraced her family and her ancestral home of China felt more like "home" because of the love and family ties that remained. The latter chapters could have focused a bit more on the details of how she was accepted into an elite college and Harvard law school, the challenges she found coming back and finding work and creating a life in this "beautiful" but sometimes ugly country for those attempting to call it "home", the USA.

I finished this book almost a week ago and still don’t have the words to describe the impact it has had. Beautiful Country is an engaging memoir that I simply could not put down. It broke my heart, caused me to question many things I take for granted and many times put a smile on my face. What I keep coming back to is how strong her family is and the determination they have to create a better life for themselves.
I was so impressed that she taught herself to read and speak English and that she kept her education a priority..
This is a book that I will be gifting and recommending. It is definitely a 5⭐️ read.
Thank you to #netgalley, #doubledaypublishing and #julieqianwang for the ARC. It had been a true pleasure.

Touted as a staple memoir in the vein of The Glass Castle, Educated, and Crying in H-Mart, Beautiful Country recounts Quien Julie Wang’s experience as an undocumented immigrant in the US, as well as how intergenerational trauma shaped both her childhood and adult life. Wang’s parents both lived through the Cultural Revolution in China, and the restrictive politics are what lead them to eventually move to America when Wang was 7. Unfortunately, the same reason many Chinese families had for immigrating to the US was also one of the same reasons for anti-Asian (but especially anti-Chinese) discrimination, making life as an immigrant harder.

This book had me tearing up from page 1. The joy of her obliviousness as a child in China , as well as the pockets of it in the US (browsing a stationary store, a chicken dinner, falling in love with books, dancing with her dad) contrasted so sharply with the trauma of being undocumented, her struggle to fit in, and having to grow up so quickly and take on parental responsibilities while she is in the US.
There’s one part where she ponders on what it means to be safe, and where her home really is, and that hit really hard. As someone who grew up in a well-off middle class household, who never had to worry about food on the table, who had money to afford extracurriculars like dance and piano lessons and to buy books, the depiction of poverty and how it can affect a child was really eye-opening. This is one of those books hyped up all over bookstagram that’s totally worth the hype.

CW: racism and xenophobia (violence and slurs), Asian fetishization, poverty and food insecurity, domestic violence, verbal abuse, body shaming, suicide attempt, domestic violence, trauma, animal abuse, pedophilic stalker, anxiety

Such a lovely memoir about arriving in the US at age seven. The author’s parents were endangered by the Chinese cultural revolution. Ms. Wang grew up in New York with struggling parents but (not a spoiler as it’s in the author’s bio) overcame a lot. Unlike Educated, these parents wanted the best for her and encouraged her education, but the parents were complex individuals as well.

Evan though I had a digital copy, thanks to the publisher, I bought a copy and the audio version. Recommended.

This book is a coming of age book for Chinese American Qian Wang. As an undocumented citizen growing up she faced adversity and challenges. Once an adult and now an American citizen the author sheds light on many issues facing undocumented peoples in the country.

Thank you netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read and review this book.

What I loved about Beautiful County is the voice. Qian Julie Wang brings us into the wonder and awe behind the eyes of her childhood while staying close to the ways she observes hurt, pain and trauma reverberate through her family as they establish their lives in United States.
Wang shows that spirit and drive that often propels memoirs about first generation immigrant children, and Wang carefully adds intersections that make this an important memoir in today’s contexts. Gender is at the forefront, and her care taking responsibilities. The cracks and failings of the educational system reveal a different resilience she has to cultivate as well.

The pressure of being noticed, of causing a scene, created a throughline of tension that taught me even more about the immigrant and refugee experience in the U.S.. With heart and care so big, it’s painful to watch her so often have to shrink.

I think this memoir will be especially great for reading groups and classrooms!

"The Chinese refer to being undocumented colloquially as "hei": being in the dark, being blacked out."

Beautiful Country is a piercing memoir about the experiences of Qian, who as a young child, along with her mother, joins her father in New York City to try to make a new life. From the very beginning, Qian's father, embittered from his two years alone in the US as an undocumented immigrant, perpetually reminds his daughter to trust no one, and to preface her conversations by telling people that she was born here, that she has always lived here. Sadly, he admits to his little girl that while he had been a full man in China, he no longer was one in their adopted home. The family fears that authorities will pick them up at any moment, and this terror is palpable thoroughout the memoir.

Qian's life is marred by extreme poverty and insecurity. Hunger was her natural state, and her feelings of inadequacy and fear were constant companions. She developed an anxiety disorder, which caused her get a queasy stomach followed by vomiting, and she eventually began to tell her friends lies about who she was - including telling them that she was half white. One of Qian's most heartbreaking experiences included being the parentified child of her mother, who although a professional in China, was now relegated to sweat shops and other back breaking work. For lack of child care, and in solidarity with her mother, Qian accompanies her to her work, understanding all too young how injustices are visited upon undocumented people.

School is another place where Qian suffers at the hands of white teachers, especially Mr. Kane, who believes himself to be the white savior who will shame Qian into behaving as he suggests. Despite the fact that Qian a self-taught and voracious reader, Mr. Kane works to unravel her self esteem in an ongoing manner. (Sadly, these teachers are still out there).

As a former teacher of immigrant students, there is so much in this book that resonated for me. It is a heartbreaking but necessary read, in many ways reminiscent of Girl in Translation.

This memoir should be required reading about the immigrant experience. The author’s perspective and writing style puts you right in with her family and their experience. The memoir is so thought provoking and made me want to understand the immigrant experience even more. I am looking forward to more writing from this author.

Wow! This book is a reminder of why I used to say memoirs were my favorite genre. Although this is a memoir, it's the type that reads like a fictional story (similar to The Glass Castle). Qian Qian told her story of immigration is such a beautiful way. I related to this story more than I thought I would even though I was born here in the United States.

Qian Qian starts the story with her trip over to the US at a very young age. She then continues it with her memories between then and about 6th grade. She shares all her struggles, her Mama and Baba's struggles, as well as all her highlights, including the few gifts she receives through her time in the US. This is a beautiful story that shares the things immigrants have to go through to try to raise their children in an environment that gives them more opportunities.

I really hope Qian will write more memoirs about her memories after 6th grade because she is a talented writer.

Wow! This book packs a punch! I was struck by a comment made in the introduction in which the author commented that she saw the hypocrisy of Obama’s administrations. While supporting the DREAM Act, the administration also significantly increased the number of deportations. Wang ably tells the harrowing story of growing up in New York City. Only her father had a green card, but to survive, her mother needed to work. With no money for babysitters, Wang often went with her mother to these unsavory jobs. Often hungry, Qian would share her tiny bit of food with a kitten she befriended. When her father drove the kitten away blaming the family’s misfortunes on the calico cat, she had no friends. By lying and bravado, Qian made it through the mishmash of schools she attended. With grit and determination, she got herself enrolled in one of the city’s top schools. But luck remains elusive, until her mother relocates them to Toronto Canada. From the minute they arrived at the US-Canadian border and went through immigration, things began to look up for the family. They were no longer fearful of being arrested and forced to return to China. Now I understand her comment about the Obama administration.

I was encapsulated by Beautiful Country from the moment I started it and finished it in one sitting because once I started I couldn’t put it down. The author’s ability to convey atmosphere and emotion in such subtle and sophisticated ways is so special and adds to the ease of getting lost in her story telling. I hope everyone reads this book. I have a feeling this book is going to have a profound impact on discourse surrounding the American immigrant experience and foster greater understanding and empathy.

For the first three-quarters or so of this book, I was absolutely enthralled. Qian Julie Wang tells the story of her relatively prosperous, if politically oppressed life in Northern China before her Ba Ba emigrates to America, followed by herself and her Ma Ma five years later. They overstay their visas, becoming undocumented while Ba Ba and Ma Ma work a series of awful jobs to scrape together a life in Brooklyn, constantly dodging anyone who might seem to want to deport them. Qian struggles in school even after teaching herself how to read English, less due to her innate abilities than to the less than nurturing attitudes of certain teachers.

As the years pass, the corrosive effect of living in the shadows takes its toll on the small family, coming to a head when Ma Ma is hospitalized. Even after her recovery, Ma Ma is further disillusioned by her inability to become documented and thus get a job worthy of the qualifications she's worked so hard to achieve both pre- and post-immigration. So Ma Ma takes a drastic step, and Qian is finally set on a certain path to freedom from the fear of losing everything she loves because of arbitrary employment and status regulations.

So, as an <a href="https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/29/open-borders-the-science-and-ethics-of-immigration-by-bryan-caplan-zach-weinersmith/">open borders</a> absolutist, books that expose the completely ridiculous ways in which people contort themselves to justify denying human rights to migrants are totally my jam. Towards this end, Beautiful Country knocks it out of the park. It's a stain on the moral character of any peoples who allow migrants to work for pennies under inhumane conditions, as the entire Wang family is forced to do. Some of our citizens even have the nerve to decry a shortage of skilled labor while refusing to extend protections to the qualified, further making up arbitrary reasons to harm the vulnerable while still profiting from their exploitation. Jackasses like these don't see immigrants as people, only tools.

Fortunately, we have books like Ms Wang's that highlight the humanity of the undocumented by depicting with complete frankness all the trauma that a life of poverty, enforced only by a lack of documentation (which, let's be honest, is fundamentally due to racism,) inflicts upon her and her parents. She has the self-awareness to show how kindness and understanding require effort that the impoverished and hungry often simply can't afford, freely admitting to having been kind of a shit herself, while still calling out the people who don't have this excuse, whose experiences are so limited to their lives of relative privilege that they don't even ask why a child would behave in seemingly self-sabotaging ways, instead assuming it's because she's lazy or indifferent. She catalogs both the people who were kind to her as well as all the ways people were gratuitously unkind, including in this last list her parents and the bizarre pronouncements they would lay on her. It's fascinating and heartbreaking to follow along with a maturing Qian as she sees her father become exactly the opposite of who he'd wanted to be, why he'd left China in the first place.

And yet, the book didn't land with me as emotionally as it might have. Ms Wang and I don't share the same sense of humor, which probably doesn't help. I appreciate hiding in the bathroom as much as if not more so than anyone else, but felt it kind of weird that so much time was spent on her bowels without finding a proper, or even any, diagnosis for her childhood ailments. More crucially, the end run Ma Ma makes to solve their problems feels under-explored and, frankly, dissonant with the rest of the memoir. I definitely felt for <spoiler>Canada in the way they essentially rescued an abused family only to have the youngest turn around and run right back to her abuser</spoiler> as soon as she was able. I understand Ms Wang's motivations on a visceral level but I really wish she had explored the topic in greater depth. It's one thing to say that NYC was so important to her formatively, and that her father would rather eat America's shit than China's fruits, but a thoughtful examination of why this is would have helped anchor the ending with greater meaning -- after all, just because I feel a certain way doesn't mean that's how or why she did, and I'm basically reading this book because I want to hear her thoughts and opinions. As it is, the chapters about Ms Wang as an adult felt tacked on, making for a poor coda to the vital tale of her childhood, never mind an adolescence that was skimmed over almost entirely. I also had a hard time figuring out whether or not she was castigating Chinese culture for some of the truly awful things that were taught to her -- I'd like to think she was rebuking them, but the tone was uncertain, as if she feared that saying as much meant she was betraying her heritage.

But, you know, any book that seeks to lance the weird apathy, if not downright hostility, large swathes of America feel on the subject of "illegal" immigration is a good thing. It takes a lot of courage to admit to the trauma and shame of your past, and Ms Wang certainly does her best to present her experience with honesty. Hopefully, her efforts will encourage the rest of us to keep working towards a world that is more just and kind to people who are looking only to work without exploitation, and hence perhaps to fit in and give back to the communities where they find themselves.

Beautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang was published September 7 2021 by Doubleday Books and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9780385547215">Bookshop!</a>

Memoirs have become one of my favorite genres, and Qian Julie Wang’s heartfelt and equal parts heartbreaking and hopeful story is no exception.

7 year old Qian arrived in NYC after immigrating from China full of hope and promises of a beautiful country. However, her family’s experiences and hardships quickly show that instead of a life of ease, it will take all the determination they can muster just to survive.

This story is not only the vulnerable outpouring of a courageous individual. It should be approached as an opportunity to learn.

Reading memoirs is important because...
• You receive firsthand accounts of people or places you might not otherwise experience in your own life’s path.
• Your eyes, ears, and heart are more attuned to recognize others’ journeys and be willing to listen and learn.
• It is easy to convince ourselves that our stories (especially when they come from places of privilege) are everyone else’s story. And if not, it could or should be. (This phenomenon is called “the danger of a single story”)
• Memoirs can serve as mirrors to examine our own lives, perspectives, and our “why’s” for what we do, what we believe, and how we live.

Things I will look at differently and/or seek to learn more about in the future based on this memoir include but are not limited to:
• My treatment of students in my classroom. Am I treating them with dignity? Letting stigmas and assumptions get in the way of helping them reach their own full potential?
• Immigration
• Labor laws and worker treatment

A beautifully written and compelling memoir about growing up in Brooklyn as an illegal immigrant, Qian's story is vivid and impressive in detail. She recounts memories from China, her initial impressions of Brooklyn and stories about elementary school teachers and friends. We see her perspective and views of the world; the places in which she seeks comfort - the library and television, her accepting and kind friends. We also see homes and families through her eyes - the excess and privilege enjoyed and expected by many. This memoir gives a view into life with language barrier struggles and prejudice, constant fear of deportation and the desire to survive and to thrive. Ba Ba and Ma Ma, flawed, like all of us, work to build a better life and to try to surround their daughter with love. Through their hardship comes illness, conflict and heartbreak. Qian tells her story with great detail and emotion in a readable and relatable way. This was an absolute joy to read.

Wow, what an amazing memoir. I adopted a child from China around the same time as Qian arrived in the US and I can't help thinking what different Americas these two girls arrived in. This book says so much about our privilege in the US and how blind we are to the people around us. There are scenes in Qian's book that are heart breaking, yet she has so much grit and hope for the future.