Beautiful country : a memoir
(Book - Regular Print)
Author
Published
New York : Doubleday, [2021].
Edition
First edition.
Physical Desc
x, 305 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Status
Mayer Public Library - BIO - Biography Collection
WANG
1 available
WANG
1 available
Prescott Public Library - NF - Nonfiction Books
974.7100495 WANG
1 available
974.7100495 WANG
1 available
Prescott Valley Public Library - NF - Nonfiction Books
974.7 WAN
2 available
974.7 WAN
2 available
More Details
Published
New York : Doubleday, [2021].
Format
Book - Regular Print
Edition
First edition.
Language
English
Notes
Description
"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. "Ba Ba told me this and I in turn carried it in my heart: so long as we didn't stake claim to what wasn't ours--the things, our rooms, America, this beautiful country--we would be okay." 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 because she doesn't speak the language 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 in comparison 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 don't--you tell them you were born here. Do as you're told or we could be separated forever. Understanding implicitly the toll this has taken on her parents, Qian tries desperately to cheer them up and mediate their increasingly heated 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 cruelty and indignity of America's immigration system, while also crafting a narrative of resilience from her family's small moments of joy: their first slice of pizza, "shopping days" when the family would unearth unlikely treasures in Brooklyn's trash, and the necessary escape she found in books at the local library. 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"--,Provided by publisher
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Also in this Series
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Copies
Location | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Mayer Public Library - BIO - Biography Collection | WANG | Find It Now |
Prescott Public Library - NF - Nonfiction Books | 974.7100495 WANG | Find It Now |
Prescott Valley Public Library - NF - Nonfiction Books | 974.7 WAN | Find It Now |
Prescott Valley Public Library - NF - Nonfiction Books | 974.7 WAN | Find It Now |
SPL in the Village - BIO - Biography Collection | BIOGRAPHY WANG, Q. | Find It Now |
Subjects
LC Subjects
Autobiographies.
Biographies.
Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Biography.
Chinese Americans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Illegal immigration -- New York (State) -- New York.
Immigrants -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Noncitizens -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Shijiazhuang Shi (China) -- Biography.
Wang, Qian Julie, -- 1987- -- Childhood and youth.
Wang, Qian Julie, -- 1987- -- Family.
Biographies.
Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Biography.
Chinese Americans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Illegal immigration -- New York (State) -- New York.
Immigrants -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Noncitizens -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Shijiazhuang Shi (China) -- Biography.
Wang, Qian Julie, -- 1987- -- Childhood and youth.
Wang, Qian Julie, -- 1987- -- Family.
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Citations
APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)
Wang, Q. J. (2021). Beautiful country: a memoir (First edition.). Doubleday.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)Wang, Qian Julie, 1987-. 2021. Beautiful Country: A Memoir. Doubleday.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)Wang, Qian Julie, 1987-. Beautiful Country: A Memoir Doubleday, 2021.
MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)Wang, Qian Julie. Beautiful Country: A Memoir First edition., Doubleday, 2021.
Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.
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