Qian Julie Wang

Beautiful Country is the real deal. Heartrending, unvarnished, and powerfully courageous, this account of growing up undocumented in America will never leave you.--Gish Jen, author of The Resisters An incandescent and heartrending memoir about Qian Julie Wang's five years living undocumented after immigrating with her parents from China to New York City in 1994. In Chinese the word for the United States, Mei Guo, translates directly to beautiful country, but when seven-year-old Qian is plucked from her warm and happy childhood surrounded by extended family in China, she finds a world of crushing fear and poverty instead. Unable to speak English at first, Qian is isolated and disregarded, put into special education classes and humiliated by teachers and classmates when she struggles to pay attention because of hunger or exhaustion. She encounters racism--and people of other races--for the first time, shocked at where her family fits, compared to their status as educated elites in China. After school she works shifts alongside her mother in Chinatown sweatshops. There is so much about Qian's new home that doesn't make sense, but the rules of survival are drilled into her head: If you see a policeman, you must run in the other direction. If anyone asks, or even if they dont, you tell them you were born here. Otherwise we could be separated forever. Understanding impliclity the toll this has taken on her parents, Qian tries desperately to cheer them up and mediate their arguments, certain that if she is good enough, she can hold the family together. In remarkable, unsentimental prose Wang channels her childhood perspective, illuminating the impossible reality of the American immigration system and her family's refusal to surrender to its cruelty. Searing and unforgettable, Beautiful Country is an essential book about the cost of making a home in a hostile land from an astonishing new talent.

A Memoir

Beautiful Country

momo-reads

Unflinching memoir of childhood poverty, fear, and “illegal” immigration. Full of humanity and , surprisingly, hope.

Kristen Claiborn

This is a book I likely would not have had on my radar before I started following the celebrity book pages. For a long time I allowed myself to believe I wasn’t a fan of nonfiction (it might be because of the number of utterly pretentious people that proclaim they ONLY read nonfiction, they don’t have time for the frivolities found in make-believe) so I completely avoided anything that wasn’t made-up. I admit, I was wrong (please don’t expect that admission to happen often). I have discovered that non-fiction work can be just as enjoyable, and certainly educational. I have especially enjoyed some enlightening memoirs, discovering that some people’s actual lives are more interesting that any fiction could be. WAIT! True-crime! I have always enjoyed true crime! This book is not, exactly, true crime. 
	Having lived in America for the entirety of my life, it always blows my mind to hear stories of how hard people try to get here and to stay here. In 2021, we are inundated with stories of immigrants amassing on our southern border, and it makes me wonder what is here that is so much better than where they came from. And why would anybody place themselves in such precarious situations on what could possibly be a false hope? Reading this story made my heart break for this family. They appeared to be prospering and doing well in China, so why would they leave that situation for the unknown? When the family finally got here, their lives were in no way enhanced or “better.” They lived in what sounded like an absolutely terrible apartment (if it could even be called that). The money they made was barely enough to pay rent and left them frequently without food. And on top of that, they lived in constant fear. It’s a head-scratcher. 
	I am also disgusted with how this family were treated. Why does being American mean you have to treat at least one minority poorly? Where is that written into our DNA? I know that through the years, many groups of immigrants have been targeted and disparaged, hell during the Great Depression, Californians had no tolerance for those that migrated there from the Dust Bowl states. It’s just sad and appalling. It has made me realize that immigrants, regardless of their legal status, are some of the most hard-working, tolerant, persevering, and downright clever people that exist in the United States (and likely other countries). 
	Wang’s story isn’t a new story, and it will be told again and again as long as intolerance for immigrants persists, but we need to hear it. We need to know what they have gone through and how successful they have been despite opposition. We need to read her story.

anxiouspixie

This is an absolutely stunning, beautiful, and tragic story. In response to numerous 1 and 2 star comments of this book – it feels like they missed the point. Yes, this is a memoir that only really focuses on her first few years in the country, but the last chapter makes it clear that this book was a form of healing for the author. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and upon reading the final chapter I almost burst into tears (I am not one to easily cry at books, so I am sure others may actually cry at it) and was so enamored by how beautifully the author was able to express such complicated feelings. Would highly recommend this book.

Cheri McElroy

A beautiful, moving memoir of the trauma that living as an illegal immigrant wreaks on a family. Heartbreaking and hopeful.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A TODAY SHOW #READWITHJENNA BOOK CLUB PICK! An incandescent memoir from an astonishing new talent, Beautiful Country puts readers in the shoes of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world. "Extraordinary…Consider this remarkable memoir a new classic."—Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review* In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly “shopping days,” when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center—confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all. But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here. Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

Vivian

Beautiful Country depicts the poignant story of 7-year-old Wang Qian, who arrived in New York from China with her parents, overstayed their visa, and thus entered into the shadow of undocumented life until she was 12. Beautiful Country is a literal translation of "America" in Chinese - "Mei Guo". Written from a child's perspective, what this book did really well was showing what it means for a child to live under the constant fears of being undocumented and could be deported any moment, the lost of innocence, joy and trust, on top of that suffering from language and culture gap, racism, and witnessing your parents gradually shrinking into a weaker and darker version of themselves.

However, the question that bugged me throughout is why Wang's parents (mostly her father) decided to live as "illegals" in the US. Wang hinted at him being a repressed intellectual wishing for more freedom. Well, both her parents were professors in 90s Hebei living a very comfortable life surrounded by family, and they traded that for an undocumented life in New York making minimum wage in sweatshops and couldn't even feed their daughter? I don't buy it. Maybe it was some sort of political asylum that Wang couldn't openly discuss in her book, then she probably shouldn't have published a memoir under her real name, right? Also, her father's lack of regard for his daughter's education prospect (she can't go to University as "illegal" - this was before DACA) as a "professor" and his reluctance to go to Canada as a legal resident baffled me. All of these narratives did not add up for me and thus cast great doubt on the story's credibility. 

I had higher expectation for this book and hoped Wang would go into more depth and complexity by discussing her identity reconciliation as Chinese, American, Canadian, Jewish (apparently she identifies herself as Jewish American now). But the memoir ended when she was 12 years old with the last 2 or 3 pages summing up what she accomplished afterwards, with keywords such as Swarthmore, Yale Law School, Manhattan, "top law firm"... As if another textbook "American dream" ending is the answer to everything. Honestly, it’s almost 2022, can people please just stop promoting the American dream metaphor where upward social mobility is achieved purely through hard work and human worth is exclusively defined by financial success? I’m allergic.

Veronica Zarate

In Beautiful Country, Qian Julie Wang shares her time living in New York after she and her parents immigrated from China. Her memoir covers the limited and filtered view she had of America - "Mei Guo" (Beautiful Country) - as an illegal immigrant (after they outstayed their VISA). Her family's difficulty in making a stable living and their constant fear of being discovered impacted what they had access to, how the fear influenced their everyday decisions, and how their circumstances influenced the way Qian interacted with and perceives the world around her. This memoir is beyond thought-provoking. I do not have the words to do it justice. 

We all view our countries through a filter - whether it's the one you grew up with, the one you were taught in school, or the one you develop if your worldview expands. After reading Beautiful Country, I came to find how blissfully ignorant I've been, emphasized by the fact that Qian and I seemed to have been children in America around the same time. This parallel created a needed chasm in how I now perceive my childhood and my life. Qian and I  watched the same shows, wanted the same toys, found solace in similar books and in writing. Picturing myself at that age, what I worried about - the Jansport backpack I couldn't have or the book report I had due - and how I let those trivial aspects dictate my days. Whereas Qian learned English on her own and before her parents, was a rock for her mother, made sacrifices for her parents, worked in a sweatshop, looked for furniture off the street, avoided authority, welcomed verbal abuse from her parents - and still kept her spunky nature and sense of humor. Her parents provided her with Canadian citizenship and she still sought the US after the traumatic introduction she experienced in New York. Her ability to share such a raw picture of her early life, her ability to place a harsh lens even on herself, and her drive to now work as a civil rights lawyer in New York are clearly attributed to the strength she seems to have exhibited all her life. 

This is a book that I would recommend to anyone and everyone - anyone living in the US, anyone working in public service, teachers, parents. Everyone. The experiences Qian and her family went through are unfathomable to so many of us, and that is just one of the many reasons why this book is so important.

Julia Tari

I enjoyed the perspective and learning about the experiences someone can have in my own country that I know nothing about. 

Beautiful Country A Memoir

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