5 beautiful stars

While I was busy raising my daughter in white suburbia, immigrant families worked in sweat shops and struggled to put food on the table. I had little idea that this was happening in ‘America the Beautiful’ in the 1980s. Beautiful Country, a literal translation for “America” is a powerful story of a Chinese family struggling to not only survive but find its way despite pervasive fear of being caught as illegal immigrants. As a young child, Quian fears she had failed to protect Ma Ma from a disease and hospitalization by wanting a cat. That kind of superstition and anxiety were foreign to me. So was her hunger and the prejudice she faced.

Qian has a fantastic memory for details and writes with great honesty. Once she discovered ‘free books’ at the library, her life began to change. She devoured books, including The Babysitter’s Club series that my daughter read. Qian’s sixth grade her white male teacher accused her of copying others’ works because her writing was so good. After that, she purposely put mistakes in her essays. My heart broke for her.

Wang’s prose is insightful: “I caught the sight of Ba Ba standing alone by his new car, face dark with the sadness of a boy who had no one to play with.” Few words elicit strong emotions. Her writing is luminescent, “She was a raisin of herself.”

Even in the acknowledgements section, Wang’s writing shines. “You have magicked my pipe dream into reality, and I will forever be pinching myself. To everyone in the publishing industry committed to amplifying the voices of authors from marginalized backgrounds – thank you. Progress would be impossible without heroes like you. She even thanks her therapists for “helping me process and understand my childhood, work through the anxiety that came with sharing it with the world, and most of all, reclaim my life from its jaws.”

I look forward to more of Qian Julie Wang’s writing. Her work is truthful and important.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a powerful story of the immigrant experience in the United States. Told with heartbreakingly beautiful prose, it really painted a picture of the constant state of fear, hopelessness and anxiety that undocumented immigrants live through daily. Qian’s childhood was defined by the constant state of poverty and the fear that they would be deported.

Qian is an incredible writer. I felt as if I was with her and her family experiencing all the hardship they faced. This is a must read. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a great and powerful memoir. Lives are more than political points and I think a lot of people forget or don't acknowledge the struggles that immigrants endure to live in the United States.

The title says it all for this moving and heartbreaking memoir that has left an imprint in both my mind and on my heart

A great book but it drones on. I found myself uninterested to keep reading. It was extremely detailed but almost too much?

Wow! Beautiful Country is a STUNNING novel. It was a fantastic read with so many wonderful anecdotes. I was so enraptured with this book, and I want everyone to read this.

Beautiful Country is a book that I put off because I felt intimidated by it. I always feel so unqualified to criticize an unfamiliar topic, and much less tell someone how to tell their personal story. But the beauty of literature is to be exposed to other stories and lives to become more open-minded and well-rounded.

By the end of this book, I felt breathless. Qian's journey from China to New York is enlightening, and while I read, I recognized the tiny moments where Qian silently suffered. There are many heartbreaking times in the immigration process that humbled my understanding of the journey. I have read plenty of books that deal with the fear of traveling to a new country that doesn't accept you, but I haven't come across many novels that centralize on the emotions once they are in the United States.

I thought Qian Julia Wang brought such an authenticity to her life with her parents, and it was hard to read about the many people she interacted with that never fully grasped her struggle. It was eye-opening as a human to make sure I look at each person, knowing that I do not know their whole story. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading a complicated family experience. You could read this book in one fell swoop or read the small anecdotes separately.

What an amazing story. This memoir really spoke to me and I didn’t want it to end. It was definitely heavy but so powerful and moving. Wow. Thank you.

What a beautiful memoir recounting the author's true experience of immigration to the United States. There are so many heartbreaking and heartwarming moments in this book.
One aspect that I have witnessed firsthand is the way those highly educated immigrants are not given any respect for their educational achievements. This means that many of them come to the USA and are forced into low paying jobs that they can never escape. I have seen fully trained physicians be required to redo their entire post-graduate training in order to obtain their licenses and credentialing to practice medicine. Those that can do it have to be young enough to not have huge financial burdens and often come from family money that allows them the freedom to do the training. The system is such a challenge.
This is a well written testimony to these struggles.
#BeautifulCountry #NetGalley #Doubleday

Beautiful memoir, very informative regarding the immigrant experience in America. Opened my eyes to many issues.

This is a fascinating and powerful memoir of the author's coming to America as a small child and her first few years trying to fit in living in NYC's Chinatown. She didn't speak either English or Cantonese. Her professor parents could only get menial jobs and survival was all about trying to fly below the radar and not get deported once they overstayed their visa. Wang triumphed from these and numerous other challenges and the book shows her painful POV quite lyrically and with many heartfelt situations about how she makes her way around the city, deals with her mother's illness, and is caught in between various conflicts that I don't want to give away the plot. She does achieve success and becomes a corporate lawyer, works for Jewish causes (which is also part of her heritage) and eventually becomes a US citizen. As she says, it takes a "certain amount of foolishness to build your first book around your deepest childhood traumas," but she pulls it together in a very compelling read.

“The heartbreak of one immigrant is never that far from that of another.”

“Ma Ma liked to say that a woman could be beautiful without being pretty, but that a woman could not be beautiful without having dignity. It would take me decades to unravel what that meant.”

This was the beautiful story of 7-year-old Qian, who arrives in New York City in 1994 and is overwhelmed by fear. In China her parents were professors; in America her family is “illegal”.

This beautiful memoir was so emotional and heartwarming and profoundly sad at times. But what I took away from it was tenacity. Strength. Determination. Qian and her parents struggled, of course, but what they were able to overcome is so admirable. It makes me feel very fortunate for my circumstances and upbringing. 💕

Thank you to Netgalley, Doubleday Books, and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Beautiful memoir of the author's experience leaving China to come to the U.S. I will be recommending this to everyone.

Beautiful Country is the moving memoir of Qian Julie Wang. It is the story of a family who migrated to America as undocumented Chinese immigrants. Although her father was a dissident and both parents highly educated; they lived in poverty, working minimal wage jobs but always fearing deportation. Wang skillfully presents her life from the eyes of a child whose intelligence, curiosity and bravery overcame the trauma of her circumstance and upbringing. Ultimately, Wang grew up to be the lawyer she had fantasized about as a child. The story is a relevant one today as America continues to struggle with immigration policy and the children of illegal immigrants are caught in the crosshairs. Beautiful Country provides one look into the lives of the invisible immigrant population. It is one that needs to be read and remembered.

This book is one of those heart wrenching stories that will stay with you for a while. I know it will me.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the eGalley. All opinions are my own.

The author grew up as an illegal immigrant in New York in the 90s, and this book mainly focuses on her experiences before she was even 10 years old. Her descriptions are vivid and she does an excellent job of showing you the world through her young eyes.

I feel like my review should focus on the deprivation and the hardship (she worked in a sweatshop in New York, she was always hungry, and America broke her parents beyond repair) but I'm really hung up on some of the smaller details, like her father's treatment of her cat, Marilyn. I want to get into all the small details that stuck with me, but I don't want to post a bunch of spoilers.

The first marketing push for this book compared it to Educated, which is a bad comparison. I think of Educated as a book about a girl struggling to get an education while being isolated and abused by her super religious cult leader father. So the comparison made me immediately assume that it's a story about abusive parents. This is more about a girl struggling to survive while being abused by a country. I feel like she made special care to let us all know the problem wasn't her parents, as much as it was what was done to them.

I would recommend this to anyone who's interested in learning about the hardships of being an undocumented immigrant in America.

Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang is a moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country of the world. Qian and her parents move to New York from China when she was very young, thinking they are going to have a better life. It's quite shocking to them when they actually get here and the things that they have to endure. I have always been drawn into memoirs but this one really pulled me in. I think because it's more contemporary and a lot of things mentioned by Qian, I remember and I was into those things as well (Babysitters Club, Polly Pockets, etc). Besides all that though, its such an emotional and heartbreaking story and makes you feel grateful for what you have.
Thank you Netgalley for the advanced readers copy in exchange for my review.

This searing, yet beautiful book will stay with me for some time. Qian‘s story of her family’s immigration and growing up in poverty was heartbreakingly tender.

✈️ Book - Review ✈️
Beautiful Country
Qian Julie Wang
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Beautiful Country is an honest and, at times, harrowing memoir of an undocumented Chinese family. Through the eyes of Qian, a daughter struggling to fit in in a country that doesn’t want her, this memoir was riveting and painful to read, but so valuable.

At the start of this book, Wang wrote that she had attempted writing this as a semi-autobiographical work of fiction, but felt that the only thing that really capture and do justice to her family’s experience was a true account of what occurred. Despite this, Wang’s love of fiction and story telling bleeds through, as this felt like a journey and a narrative that rose and fell like any good novel. Wang writes exceptionally, and truly immersed me in the experiences of her and her family. My heart felt so heavy at numerous moments in this book, but was lifted at just the right moments to remind me that, even in dark circumstances, there can be sparks of joy to light our way.

One of the main messages that I felt Wang tried to convey was being authentic to your identity and your heritage, regardless of opposition or fear. I felt that, while this theme was central to her memoir, the resolution of this at the conclusion of the book did not feel as fleshed out as I would have liked. Wang chooses to end her memoir, at least in its linear form, at a very pivotal moment in her upbringing. While this makes sense, I wish I could have read more about her journey to acceptance and pride, rather than briefly touching on it in the final moments of the book.

Regardless of that, this book is important, this book is powerful, and this book is impactful. It opened my eyes to experiences of those outside of my own culture, which is exactly what I wanted it to do. If you are looking for a new memoir that carries weight, I highly recommend Beautiful Country!

Thank you Netgalley, Doubleday Books, and the author for a digital copy of this book.

This was a well written memoir about the author’s experience growing up as a Chinese immigrant in the US. The book tells her story from the time she moved to New York until she was in sixth grade. Each chapter recalls her painful childhood, dealing with poverty, hunger, racial discrimination and detachment from her parents who didn’t show her much affection. It enlightened me as to her struggles but it seemed as though she had virtually no happy moments. The book ends with her moving from NY and ending up with a very successful life. But I’m curious as to how this happened and what helped her to find her path to happiness. I feel as though she only showed us the hardships, which were certainly real, but how did she find the way out? That might be more inspirational to others.

My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

An honest, raw, and sparkling memoir of a childhood spent watching her parents struggle with the ideal of living the US vs the reality of being an undocumented immigrant in NYC.

ARC from the publisher via NetGalley but the opinions are my own.