Beautiful Country

 Tell me a story… about the immigrant experience 

Beautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang

Expected publication date: September 7, 2021

Date read: August 27, 2021

In Chinese, the word for "America" - Mei Guo - translates directly to "beautiful country". 

When Qian arrived in New York City in 1994, she was just seven years old. Her father had come to America a few years before, and now she and her mother were joining him. In China, her parents were professors. In America, as illegal immigrants, they are barely scraping by, working jobs in sweatshops and going "shopping" on the side of the road. Speaking almost no English, Qian teaches herself the language through books and learns about her new country through American television. When the stress of this new life begins to break her parents, Qian does her best to keep her family together, never losing hope of a better life. 

This was a wonderfully written memoir. Wang is able to perfectly capture what her childhood was like, to the point that I often forgot that I was hearing an adult tell the story. Her childhood was harsh and unimaginable, but Wang was able to tell her story with a mix of truthfulness and hopefulness, never glossing over the difficult times, but also not complaining about them. To her, as a child, this was just the way things were. 

As a white, middle-class American, it's difficult to accept sometimes that this was reality for a number of people as recently as the 1990s (and I have no doubt that its still true for many people today.) This memoir, in a way that wasn't at all preachy or angry, showed what many people are willing to do in order to achieve the opportunities they believe that this "beautiful country" can offer them if they work hard enough for it. 

Note: While this book itself is not at all political, there is a forward by the author that briefly discusses the recent political climate and how it led her to finally tell her story. 

Overall I found this to be a really well-written memoir about Qian Wang's childhood in America. I loved hearing her story, and found it an easy read despite the subject matter - while it was often serious, the fact that it was all being told from the child's point of view helped keep the tone light. I'm glad I read this one. 

Rating: 4/5 stars

Trigger warnings: racism/racial slurs

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.