Beautiful country: a memoir
(Book)
Author:
Published:
New York : Doubleday, [2021].
Physical Desc:
x, 305 pages : illustration ; 25 cm
Status:
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 impliclity 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"--
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Location
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Colusa Main Branch Adult Collection
B WANG W
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Folsom Adult
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974.71 Wang W
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Woodland Public Library
BIOGRAPHY Wang, Q. 2021
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Subjects
LC Subjects
Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Biography.
Chinese Americans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Immigrants -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Noncitizens -- Biography.
Shijiazhuang Shi (China) -- Biography.
Wang, Qian Julie, -- 1987- -- Childhood and youth.
Wang, Qian Julie, -- 1987- -- Family.
Chinese Americans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Immigrants -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Noncitizens -- Biography.
Shijiazhuang Shi (China) -- Biography.
Wang, Qian Julie, -- 1987- -- Childhood and youth.
Wang, Qian Julie, -- 1987- -- Family.
Other Subjects
More Details
Format:
Book
Edition:
First edition.
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780385547215
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 impliclity 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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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)
Wang, Q. J. (2021). Beautiful country: a memoir. First edition. New York, Doubleday.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Wang, Qian Julie, 1987-. 2021. Beautiful Country: A Memoir. New York, Doubleday.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Wang, Qian Julie, 1987-, Beautiful Country: A Memoir. New York, Doubleday, 2021.
MLA Citation (style guide)Wang, Qian Julie. Beautiful Country: A Memoir. First edition. New York, Doubleday, 2021.
Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
Staff View
Grouped Work ID:
b6dc1a8a-831b-3875-d420-892dbd865ac1
Record Information
| Last Sierra Extract Time | Apr 17, 2024 01:28:27 PM |
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| Last File Modification Time | Apr 17, 2024 01:30:34 PM |
| Last Grouped Work Modification Time | Apr 26, 2024 02:10:38 AM |
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