Beautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang

Publisher: Doubleday Books

Publication date: September 7th 2021

Pages: 320

In this memoir, Qian Julie Wang describes her life. As a seven year old child, she moved from China to New York in 1994. Everything is a big change for her and her parents. First of all; in China, her parents where professors, in America they have to start all over again in poverty, and have to make ends meet as sweathshop workers. In China, Mei Guo is the translation for America, literally it means ''The Beautiful Country''. But that is not exactly what Qian experiences, she is mostly experiencing hunger and malnutrion, racism, harrassment. She feels completely out of place in her majorly white schools. Luckily she finds her place of peace in reading and the library. Her parents marriage also is suffering from all the pressure on the family to survive. They are undocumented, and there is the constant fear to be asked for their papers, and to be deported back to China. This is also the fear when her mother lands in hospital just before they move to Canada. Qian never gives up though and is truly a brave fighther of all the difficulties she faces, and that leads her to a job as a job as a lawyer, in where she also tries to find a place of the skinny young little girl that she still feels inside her.

I absolutely was blown away by this book. I love memoirs like this because they are just so real, realer than this isn't possible. Recently I have read House of Sticks by Ly Tran, and this book somehow reminded me of that book, as the story of Qian and Ly are quite the same, the only difference they come from Vietnam and China, but their struggle from Asia to New York are quite the same. And for both authors I have the same deep respect. Their struggles are quite harsh (and as I experienced also some hardships I can relate to this story). The book is beautifully written and very gripping and moving. 

This is truly one of the best and real books of this year, don't miss it!!