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Beautiful Country: A Memoir Hardcover – September 7, 2021

by Qian Julie Wang (Author)

4.4 4,207 ratings

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A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world—an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent • A TODAY SHOW #READWITHJENNA PICK

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.

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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

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.
Highlighted by 688 Kindle readers
Gratitude for the little she had. Heartbreak in needing it. Confusion over what our lives had become.
Highlighted by 492 Kindle readers
Only later, after living many years in fear, would I understand that the risks were much lower than we believed at the time. But in the vacuum of anxiety that was undocumented life, fear was gaseous: it expanded to fill our entire world until it was all we could breathe.
Highlighted by 466 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, NPR, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, Good Housekeeping, She Reads, and more • One of President Obama's Favorite Books of the Year

“Incredibly important, exquisitely written, harrowing. . . Beautiful Country tells [Wang’s] story, well, quite beautifully. It is not only Wang’s mastery of the language that makes the story so compelling, but also the passionate yearning for empathy and understanding. Beautiful Country is timely, yes, but more importantly it is a near-masterpiece that will make Qian Julie Wang a literary star.”—Shondaland

“For fans of Angela's Ashes and The Glass Castle.”—Newsday

“[An] exquisitely crafted memoir.”—Oprah Daily

“A heartbreaking and intimate memoir... the storytelling from a young Qian’s perspective is riveting.”—Politico

“This unforgettable memoir is eye-opening to the nth degree.”—Real Simple

“Elegantly affecting.”—The Guardian

“A coming-of-age memoir about an undocumented Chinese girl growing up in New York's Chinatown, this lyrical book is full of small moments of joy, heartbreaking pain and the struggles of a family trying to survive in the shadows of society. It's a uniquely American story, and an essential one.”—Good Housekeeping

“An astounding memoir from a debut author that you’re not going to want to miss.”—PopSugar

“[Qian Julie Wang] is remarkable, and her story is a must-read.”—Alma

“An amazing story of the emotional and physical toll of lives lived in the enforced shadows of anti-immigrant America.”—Daily Kos

“Wang’s voice is powerful and the writing is absolutely gorgeous.” —Emma Straub, author of This Time Tomorrow

“Beautiful Country rings with power and authenticity. Wang's searing exploration reveals how she and her family were forced to navigate the yawning cracks in the American Dream. An eloquent, thought-provoking and touching memoir.”—Jean Kwok, author of Girl in Translation and Searching for Sylvie Lee

“Heartrending, unvarnished, and powerfully courageous, this account of growing up undocumented in America will never leave you.”—Gish Jen, author of The Resisters

“Deeply compelling…I was moved by the love and resilience of this family thrust into darkness…that casts an urgent light on a reality that extends way beyond America’s borders.”—Hisham Matar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return

“A potent testament to the love, curiosity, grit, and hope of a courageous and resourceful immigrant child. Engaging readers through all five senses and the heart, Wang's debut memoir is a critical addition to the literature on immigration as well as the timeless category of childhood memoir.”—Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review*

“Extraordinary… With immense skill, Wang parses how her family’s illegal status blighted nearly every aspect of their life . . .While Wang’s story of pursuing the American dream is undoubtedly timeless, it’s her family’s triumph in the face of “xenophobia and intolerance” that makes it feel especially relevant today. Consider this remarkable memoir a new classic.”—Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review*

“The writing is sparse, stylish, sometimes harrowing and sometimes humorous as she narrates experiences that are incredibly common but rarely captured with this level of artful control. It’s shaping up to be one of the best memoirs of the year.”—Bookpage, *Starred Review*

“[A] powerful debut. . . [Wang] movingly tells how undocumented families like hers are often overlooked and their experiences ignored. A haunting memoir of people and places that will stay with readers long after the last page.”—Library Journal

About the Author

QIAN JULIE WANG is a graduate of Yale Law School and Swarthmore College. She is managing partner of Gottlieb & Wang LLP, an educational civil rights law firm, and her writing has appeared in major publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two rescue dogs, Salty and Peppers.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

How It Began

My story starts decades before my birth.

In my father’s earliest memory, he is four years old, shooting a toy gun at nearby birds as he skips to the town square. There he halts, arrested by curious, swaying shapes that he is slow to recognize: two men dangling from a muscular tree.

He approaches slowly, pushing past the knees of adults encircling the tree. In the muggy late-summer air, mosquitoes and flies swarm the hanging corpses. The stench of decomposing flesh floods his nose.

He sees on the dirt ground a single character written in blood:

冤

Wrongly accused.

It is 1966 and China’s Cultural Revolution has just begun. Even for a country marked by storied upheaval, the next decade would bring unparalleled turmoil. To this date, the actual death toll from the purges remains unspoken and, worse, unknown.

* * *

Three years later, my seven-year-old father watched as his eldest brother was placed under arrest. Weeks prior, my teenage uncle had criticized Mao Zedong in writing for manipulating the innocent people of China by pitting them against one another, just to centralize his power. My uncle had naïvely, heroically, stupidly signed his name to the essay and distributed it.

So there would be no high school graduation for him, only starvation and torture behind prison walls.

From then on, my father would spend his childhood bearing witness to his parents’ public beatings, all while enduring his own humiliation at school, where he was forced to stand in the front of the classroom every morning as his teachers and classmates berated him and his “treasonous” family. Outside of school, adults and children alike pelted him with rocks, pebbles, shit. Gone was the honor of his grandfather, whose deft brokering had managed to shield their village from the rape and pillage of the Japanese occupation. Gone were the visitors to the Wang family courtyard who sought his father’s calligraphy. From then on, it would just be his mother’s bruised face. His father’s silent, stoic tears. His four sisters’ screams as the Red Guards ransacked their already shredded home.

It is against this backdrop that my parents’ beginnings unfurled. My mother’s pain was that of a daughter born to a family entangled in the government. None of her father’s power was enough to insulate her from the unrest and sexism of her time. She grew up a hundred miles away from my father, and their hardships were at once the same and worlds apart.

Half a century and a migration across the world later, it would take therapy’s slow and arduous unraveling for me to see that the thread of trauma was woven into every fiber of my family, my childhood.

* * *

On July 29, 1994, I arrived at JFK Airport on a visa that would expire much too quickly. Five days prior, I had turned seven years old, the same age at which my father had begun his daily wrestle with shame. My parents and I would spend the next five years in the furtive shadows of New York City, pushing past hunger pangs to labor at menial jobs, with no rights, no access to medical care, no hope of legality. The Chinese refer to being undocumented colloquially as “hei”: being in the dark, being blacked out. And aptly so, because we spent those years shrouded in darkness while wrestling with hope and dignity.

Memory is a fickle thing, but other than names and certain identifying details—which I have changed out of respect for others’ privacy—I have endeavored to document my family’s undocumented years as authentically and intimately as possible. I regret that I can do no justice to my father’s childhood, for it is pockmarked by more despair than I can ever know.

In some ways, this project has always been in me, but in a much larger way, I have the 2016 election to thank. I took my first laughable stab at this project during my college years, writing it as fiction, not understanding that it was impossible to find perspective on a still-festering wound.

After graduating from Yale Law School—where I could not have fit in less—I clerked for a federal appellate judge who instilled in me, even beyond my greatest, most idealistic hopes, an abiding faith in justice. During that clerkship year, I watched as the Obama administration talked out of both sides of its mouth, at once championing deferred action for Dreamers while issuing deportations at unprecedented rates. By the time the immigration cases got to our chambers on appeal, there was often very little my judge could do.

In May 2016, just shy of eight thousand days after I first landed in New York City—the only place my heart and spirit call home—I finally became a U.S. citizen. My journey to citizenship was difficult to the very end: torrential rain accompanied me on my walk through lower Manhattan to the federal courthouse where I was sworn in. I brought no guests, not even my parents.

The rain did not matter. I reveled in joyful solitude, my face soaked in rainwater and happy tears. At the end of the ceremony, a videotaped President Obama greeted me as a “fellow American,” and it dawned on me that though I had become American decades ago, I had never before been recognized as one.

Six months later, I awoke to a somber and funereal New York, mourning for a nation that chose to elect a president on a platform of xenophobia and intolerance. It was then that I dug up my voice. Staring shame and self-doubt in the face, I tossed my first attempt at this project and put my fingers to the keyboard anew.

I document these stories for myself and my family, and not the least my uncle, our innominate hero. I write this also for Americans and immigrants everywhere. The heartbreak of one immigrant is never that far from that of another.

Most of all, though, 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. I have been unfathomably lucky. But I dream of a day when being recognized as human requires no luck—when it is a right, not a privilege. And I dream of a day when each and every one of us will have no reason to fear stepping out of the shadows.

Whenever things got really bad during my family’s dark years, I dreamed aloud that when I grew up, I would write our stories down so that others like us would know that they were not alone, that they could also survive. And my mother would then remind me that it was all temporary:

With your writing, Qian Qian, you can do anything.

One day, you will have enough to eat.

One day, you will have everything.

May that resilient hope light the way.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday; First Edition (September 7, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0385547218
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0385547215
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.37 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.48 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #107,567 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #55 in Emigrants & Immigrants Biographies
- #114 in Asian & Asian American Biographies
- #3,799 in Memoirs (Books)

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4.4 4,207 ratings

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Qian Julie Wang

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Qian Julie Wang is a graduate of Yale Law School and Swarthmore College. Formerly a commercial litigator, she is now managing partner of Gottlieb & Wang LLP, a firm dedicated to advocating for education and civil rights. Qian Julie's writing has appeared in major publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Cut, and she has appeared on the TODAY Show, MSNBC, and NPR. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two rescue dogs, Salty and Peppers.

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ASJ

SO needed today

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2022

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Such an important story that needed to be told. Book was enthralling and I couldn’t put it down. The writing was beautiful. Finished it in 2 days.

As an American Chinese, I related so much. My first memory I experienced of racism is when someone called me “pancake face” on the playground. Telling the story of our traumas is important to fighting racism. The story of the man who let his dog attack the author (and was pleased about it) is painful but would otherwise go unsaid.

I’m appalled by the negative reviews of this book, saying the story is unbelievable or criticizing her dad for having a gym membership when times were better for them. They were clearly missing the point of this story.

I only wish I knew what happened with the authors mom at the end of the story! I hope she found fulfillment in the end.

3 people found this helpful

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Jane Healy

Fear of deportation and inner personal strength as guiding forces

Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2024

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Wang tells the harrowing story of her coming to the United States from China in 1994 at age 7 with her mother. Her father was already in the US, leaving during China's Cultural Revolution. Because their visas expired, they lived in the shadows in squalor and constant fear of being arrested and deported. Wang was told to say that she was born in the US if ever asked. Though professionals in China, the adults worked in low-paying jobs in terrible conditions, sometimes taking Wang with them. My heart broke again and again for this family and this little girl, who was placed in a special ed classroom because of the language barrier and basically ignored. She taught herself to read using the picture books in the room. She succeeded in school and developed friendships there, which only amplified how different she was from her schoolmates. Many times, she was forced to be the adult in the room, when her mother became deathly ill, when her parents fought, when she had to find her way in an entirely different culture all alone. When she expressed her dream of becoming a lawyer to help immigrants, NO ONE--no parent, friend, teacher, or stranger--encouraged her. Yet, she did it. Her intelligence, scrappiness, and incredible inner strength helped her through. I hope Wang writes a sequel, so we get more detail about her college and early professional life, as well as the lives of her parents.

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024

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This book resonated with me as a child of poverty, I lived every realization, how revelatory each time I realized other people did not struggle as my family did. I imagined living with other families and marveled at the way they seemed to enjoy each other. I saw lack and lost dreams destroy my parents and watched the joy leach out of them year by year. Amazing book though hard to read, especially the parts about Marilyn which are the saddest.

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MSTCM

an important read

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2024

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The author describes the trauma that she and her family experiences as undocumented Chinese immigrants in the US. It reminds us of the suffering of all those are undocumented and highlights that we are all humans

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Kindle Customer

Good read and well written but seemingly exaggerated

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2022

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The author's story is remarkable and after a slow start her book is engaging. However she plays up her impossible plight a bit too much and in parts it starts to seem tendentious and something approaching unbelievable. She indeed did suffer a lot. She worked, at least for a short time, in a sweat shop with her mother and didn't have enough to eat. No one should have to suffer like that, especially as a 7 year old. That she's accomplished what she has is noteworthy and great.

Where she lost me a bit is that, although she was quick to acknowledge her woeful circumstances and how bad things were, she rarely acknowledged any good breaks. For example, the reader is reminded of her overwhelming poverty and lack of food constantly, and that seemed very plausible when she first got to America. However, clearly her family's plight got better over the course of the book (her father bought a car, her mother earned some sort of U.S. degree, etc.) but she kept going back to the fact she didn't have enough to eat. How is that possible? Were her parents purposely depriving her of food? She mentioned her mother would purchase lottery tickets every day at some point, but she still would go back to not getting enough to eat. Another issue: Very little about her parents makes sense. She paints them out to be highly superstitious, gamblers (at least her mother), and almost entirely unconcerned with school. If she didn't slip in that they were both professors in China you would have thought they were rural farmers and nearly illiterate and didn't care at all about education, literacy, math, etc. The reality is her mother was a math and computer science professor and had published multiple books. She was quick to mention that she taught her self to read, but then she slipped in that her father had taught her phonics and presumably the English alphabet. It sounds to me like her English professor father played a big role in her education. My point is that, although her life generally was terrible, she's lucky her parents were professors. It's OK to acknowledge that you're lucky in some ways even if your life otherwise is terrible. I suppose a bit of gratitude and acknowledging the role they played would have taken away from the hard luck tenor of the story (she's hungry, she's so smart but no one is helping her at all, etc.) she was trying to tell. The author went to Swarthmore (the #1 liberal arts school in US) and then Yale Law School (the #1 law school in the US) but there was not a word of thanks to anyone or anything for how she got there, although there was plenty of grousing about how different she was from her classmates. The one story she mentioned from Swarthmore was someone telling her that she's not a superstar or something along those lines.

I was poor and raised by a parent who thought college was waste of time. Through chance and hard work, I ended up at Yale Law School as well. Most of the kids there came from privilege. But get this - they were also really smart, energetic, curious, hard working, and on the whole exceptional. Although it would be easy for me to dwell on all of the ways I was different from just about everyone there and whine about my lack of privilege, I was lucky to be there. Further once I graduated, I was now very clearly among the most privileged people in the world. Just because your life is hard or terrible at some stage does not mean you are a victim your entire life. The author is now among the top, say, .1% of all Americans. I think that warrants some acknowledgement.

60 people found this helpful

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PauL L.

Nice

Reviewed in Canada on September 11, 2023

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Good

Adekemi Alliu

A book that will change your perception on migration

Reviewed in Mexico on October 5, 2021

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This is the story of thousand of immigrants around the world. I think most people should read it.

Asha Sreedhar

Interesting novel.

Reviewed in India on January 21, 2022

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It was an interesting novel.

Dozer

Traurig-schöne Geschichte

Reviewed in Germany on November 14, 2021

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Was dieses Mädchen in ihrem Leben durchmacht geht zu Herzen. Von China geht es in die USA, allerdings illegal, was Julie aber anfangs nicht weiß. So lebt die Familie in großer Armut und Julie muss schon als Kind in einem Sweat Shop mitarbeiten - neben der Schule. Dennoch schafft sie mit Hilfe von Büchern als Autodidaktin den schulischen Aufstieg. Diese Geschichte könnte erfunden sein und man würde sagen, sie sei zu übertrieben. Diese Geschichte ist aber wahr und zeigt wie gnadenlos das Leben in den USA ohne offizielle Papiere ist. Zugleich macht dieses Buch Mut, denn Julie ist ein bemerkenswerter Mensch, der immer wieder aufsteht und weitermacht. So entsteht Hoffnung. Und Julie zeigt, dass man mit Beharrlichkeit und einem starken Willen alles erreichen kann.

One person found this helpful

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Sadiah W

A must read- through the eyes of an undocumented child

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2022

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A powerful read through the eyes of an undocumented child- in this moving memoir, Qian Julie Wang gives voice to the young girl she once was, navigating the reader through often difficult/complex life experiences and lessons she was forced to learn at a young age due to her and her parents undocumented life. References to her former life in China is contrasted often with the American experience. What made me reflect most whilst reading this book on a personal level, is the strong sense of dependance, fragility, vulnerability that often accompanies a child, due to the choices one’s parents make, which can both have a positive and negative impact. But also, this memoir served as an example of how our life experiences and sometimes even our traumas, have the power to not only transform us, but also possess the potential to inevitably provide us with the knowledge and resilience we need to become who we want to be.

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