This is a hard-hitting book, that is sometimes hard to read, but really beautiful. For anyone coming to America can be hard and this really shows the struggles that some end up going through.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC!

Beautiful Country
By Qian Julie Wang
Pub Date: 2021
Publisher: Doubleday/ Penguin Random House LLC

A memoir that covers the first few years author Qian Julia Wang spent in the United States. A first person, present tense, voice brings you into the mind of elementary aged Qian as she navigates life as an undocumented immigrant, and it was not an easy one. Adult fears and responsibility are mixed with the simple hopes of any child for popular toys and loyal friends. Because our writer is telling this from her childhood perspective she takes moments to pull back and reflect on what she understands as an adult. These new understandings help to emphasize how young our author is when she carries and outsized idea of responsibility for her parents and the overall well being of the family. What I loved was the funny honesty about her development as a kid, the phases of lying and scheming that all kids move through as they grow up reminded me of being a kid. A great read for adults and teens. I would suggest parents and teachers read this while guiding younger kids through a book like “Front Desk,” by Kelly Yang.

This is a memoir about a young Chinese girl coming to America and it was pretty terrifying in many ways reading about what she goes through. The Novel was good, a bit slow moving at times but pretty eye opening. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC. .

This was a moving story but it was a bit depressing and slow moving. I was rooting for the little girl, but her parents were not like-able or easy to root for.

I was not as knocked out by "Beautiful Country" as other reviewers, and I'm trying to discover why. Immigrant stories are some of my favorites--the courage it takes to upend your life and make another is inspiring. Qian Wang is an excellent writer and she's an interesting character in her own story.

Both parents were highly educated people, and their decision to overstay their visas and sentence themselves to gruelling, brutal, invisible lives seemed a strange one. It's especially hard on Qian, who is a truth-teller at heart. She spends a lot of her younger years in the sweatshops where her parents work, helping out under the radar. As she gets older, she manages to gather friends--surprising, because this girl is tough.

Does Qian find success and satisfaction? Do her parents forge a way? A lot of "Beautiful Country" is harrowing, and Quian is notable for acknowledging her trauma as well as overcoming it.

Many thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this early copy.

What a hauntingly beautiful book. It tells the story of the authors childhood in China and years in the United States. It relates all the fears, hunger, desires of her early life in America.
There was some points that I wished that the author would have elaborated more on....the White American guy who took them to Mcdonalds.....why did he do that? which included her dad and her mom.
Further, what happened to her right arm/wrist that she sprained or broke? did it heal properly
OVerall it was a great memoir about hope, dreams, and resilience.
I love her mother. Her poor tenacious mother.

I received a free e-ARC through Netgalley.
This is a memoir about a young Chinese girl coming to America and it's pretty horrifying in many ways because of what she goes through. It definitely makes me want to help newly-arrived people so that they aren't going hungry or foregoing needed medical care. Qian is very matter of fact in her retelling, but I was moved by her recounting all of the events that happened to her as a child.

Raw and real. The author brought us through her childhood journey full of trauma, fear, and yet love too. She didn't sugarcoat nor did she try to influence a villain vs victim mentality. She vividly told her story in a way that I could feel as though I was walking in her shoes and better understanding her plight as an undocumented Chinese American. The struggles of her family and the reality of living in poverty without a lot of options were felt and well-weaved in her story.

I adored this book. I had to force myself to slow down so I could emotionally digest Qian's experiences. I appreciate the comparison with Educated, but this felt much lighter and more personal than that one. It's truly a story of Qian's journey as a child and I feel like this is the biggest strength of the book. I'll be recommending this book to pretty much anyone I can talk to, including my students. I like to keep a small library in my classroom and this will be a great addition to it.

I am so glad I read this book -- it opened my eyes to the experience of undocumented immigrants, child labor, sweat shops and education access challenges that I have never read before. Although memoir and not fiction, it reminded me of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" due to the writing style (thematic chapters that mostly follow chronological order), and major plot lines of parental love as well as illness and abuse. I think a lot of readers will appreciate this memoir and I look forward to reading more from this debut author.

I will be posting my review on release day. For now, I will just say, I absolutely loved this book. It is simple written but you can feel the pain in the author's words. A heartbreaking story, one that it will be hard to forget.

Stories of immigration always intrigue me so obviously I had to pick this one up. Written by Qian, it tells her experience of coming to America as a little girl and learning the new way of life.
With the stark differences in their life situations, they struggle through career changes, trying to fit in, life altering sickness, the family makes it through. It dragged a little in the middle for me but overall I enjoyed reading it.

Thank you NetGalley and Double Day Books for giving me the opportunity to read this.

This was a beautifully written and touching memoir that I read in two days. I have to admit that I was not aware of how hard life can be for illegal immigrants. I had to keep reminding myself as I was reading that this book took place in America, in the 1990s, a world away from the America that I myself was experiencing at the time. This book will stay with me for a while.

* Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Qian Wang’s memoir of her early years in the US is written like a melodic song, entrancing the reader as they observe Qian’s experiences with working for pennies at a sweatshop, learning English and trying to assimilate at school, watching the fractures deepen between her parents as they try to survive and live. Qian’s naïveté at how life can be in the US shows in the early pages, but her maturity mixed with young innocence starts to really shine with each new experience. My only complaint about this memoir? That we didn’t get to see more of Qian’s life in high school, college, and beyond.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for the arc.

I received a free ARC ebook of Beautiful Country: A Memoir from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Wang's lovely but painful memoir reveals the struggles and determination of an undocumented Chinese family in New York City. Her parents were well-educated professors in China but her father, Ba Ba, did not agree with the Chinese political system and believed that America, Mei Guo, represented everything he dreamed for himself and his family. Taking a chance, Ba Ba leaves everything and everyone behind to make his way to America. Two long years later in 1994, Qian and her mother, Ma Ma would make the journey to rejoin Ba Ba.

The five-year struggle in NYC does not present America as a beautiful country. The Wangs are afraid all the time of everything and everyone. Having overstayed their visas, they stay at the edges to avoid deportation. A series of lousy, poorly paid jobs for Ma Ma and Ba Ba leaves the family on the verge of starvation. Clothing and household items are acquired from the streets. Their housing is a series of rooms where bathrooms and kitchens are shared with other desperate families. Even little girl Qian works in a sweatshop pulling threads. Always there is the secret of their undocumented status. And, always, there is the tension in her parents' failing marriage.

For Qian (she eventually renames herself Julie), school is where she gets a free lunch and access to books. At first her lack of English and her general fear of everything cause her to be placed in a special education classroom. There she teaches herself to read English so that eventually she is returned to a traditional classroom. Some teachers are extraordinary while some are mediocre at best but there are always books. The Babysitter's Club series becomes her family while books like The Giver, Alice in Rapture, Sort Of and Julie of the Wolves become her window into a different world.

Stylistically, Wang incorporates Chinese vocabulary into the threads of dialogue and setting. She does so seamlessly; although the terms may be unfamiliar to American readers it is easy to understand her meaning. She also uses rather simple sentence structure when describing the initial time in America but her vocabulary and her writing style become more detailed and explicit as her English and comfort levels increase. As readers we learn and grow along with her.

Memoirs like Beautiful Country are essential reading to truly appreciate the desperation of immigrants and the impact of America's fraught immigration policies that are more political attack points than thoughtful strategies.

What a great memoir! I read that Qian Julie Wang wrote this while she rode the subway to work each day. Incredible. I certainly could use a little if that ambition in my life.

In Chinese, America’s name is Mei Guo. The direct translation of the symbols for “Mei Guo” is “beautiful country”. Qian Wang’s experience coming to America as a young child is far from beautiful, filled with trauma, but her story is certainly beautifully told.

Starting with her earliest memories and continuing on until the moments she finally felt at “home”, Qian walks us through the struggles, emotions, fears, and joys she experienced as an illegal immigrant in NYC during the 1980s. I loved how approachable her writing is, how she described her moments through the eyes of herself as child but with just enough insight as an adult to complete the settings; Every creepy guy, every deportation scare, every sweatshop she worked in were understood and believed. My one criticism is the ending, it felt rushed, but then also slow. There were a lot of years packed into the end chapter, but not substance. It was philosophical, which I enjoyed, but I would have liked to have bee told more experiences such as in the majority of the book.

I recommend this book to any reader who loves to hear interesting, well-written stories from real people. This is an incredibly real story.

Qian Julie Wang’s memoir give an unflinching look at the life of an undocumented family in America living in poverty and fear.

Beautiful Country makes a powerful statement about the immigrant experience in America with beautiful simplicity. Qian Julie Wang does not try and delve into her experiences and analyze them for our reading pleasure, she simply shares what she remembers from her life in China, how her family changed when first her father moved to America and then she and her mother followed, and their everyday lives once they lived in New York CIty. By sharing this story from the perspective she had as a child, it gives the reader a clear-eyed look at the struggles of the poor, the struggles of illegal immigrant that are trying to survive while keeping one step ahead of the people that can send back someplace even worse than what they live with right now. Throughout these reflections Wang never comes across as preaching to those who have more – money, security, things – which to me is why her story is that much stronger. It puts you in the shoes of a child that sees the joy and beauty in simple things grow gradually worn-down and disillusioned by the toll life is taking on her and her parents. This grows more amplified in the story as her mother is disappointed by the limitations the family’s status puts on her, and then becomes ill. The family eventually has to risk exposure to get Ma Ma the medical help she needs which changes the family dynamics once again. Much of the story is told with Qian learning to live with what she has, with just enough hope and opportunity making an appearance for her to aspire for more. This memoir is a reminder of how fortunate so many of us are, a reminder that there are many that have so much less, and an inspiration to not be willing to settle for what people want to give you.

Beautiful Country gives us a picture of what life is like for undocumented people. Parents who were professors in China can only jobs with low pay and long hours. Lack of benefits and fear of deportation are a constant. A story of survival and overcoming obstacles.

It was a great book and I enjoyed reading it. The characters and storyline were great. Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book.