Beautiful country : a memoir
Book
First edition.
"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, shefinds 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 strugglesto 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--youtell 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 sheis 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 Countryis an essential book about the cost of making a home in a hostile land from an astonishing new talent"--
Available copies
- 23 of 41 copies available at Westchester Library System.
Current holds
3 current holds with 41 total copies.View other formats and editions
| Location | Call Number / Shelving Location |
Barcode | Status / Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ardsley Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31000151274407 |
Checked out 05/18/2024 |
| Bedford Free Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31002150819166 |
In transit - |
| Briarcliff Manor Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31036150954011 |
Available - |
| Bronxville Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31004151794000 |
Available - |
| Chappaqua Library | BIOGRAPHY WANG, QIAN JULIE (Text) Biography |
31005600104964 |
Available - |
| Croton Free Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31006151843927 |
Available - |
| Eastchester Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31008152553463 |
Checked out 05/17/2024 |
| Greenburgh Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31009154817575 |
Available - |
| Harrison Public Library | BIO WANG (Text) Biography |
31010300261916 |
Available - |
| Hastings-on-Hudson Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31011151430121 |
Checked out 04/30/2024 |
| Hendrick Hudson Free Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31016151773818 |
Checked out 05/15/2024 |
| Irvington Public Library | BIO WANG, Q (Text) Biography |
31012154539892 |
Checked out 05/15/2024 |
| Irvington Public Library | YA BIOGRAPHY WANG, Q (Text) YA Biography |
31012154541682 |
Available - |
| John C. Hart Memorial Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31030155038219 |
Checked out 05/15/2024 |
| Katonah Village Library | B WANG (Text) Fiction |
31013151929284 |
Available - |
| Larchmont Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31014153018779 |
Available - |
| Lewisboro Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31032151417629 |
Checked out 05/15/2024 |
| Mamaroneck Public Library District | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31015152607207 |
Available - |
| Mamaroneck Public Library District | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31015152635588 |
Available - |
| Mount Kisco Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31017100341756 |
Available - |
| Mount Pleasant Branch Library | B WANG, QIAN (Text) Biography |
31024250749697 |
Checked out 05/14/2024 |
| Mount Pleasant Public Library | B WANG, QIAN JULIE (Text) Biography |
31024153775658 |
Checked out 05/15/2024 |
| Mount Vernon Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31018155616142 |
Available - |
| New Rochelle Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31019156735204 |
Checked out 05/15/2024 |
| North Castle Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31001152001831 |
Available - |
| Ossining Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31021153419808 |
Available - |
| Port Chester-Rye Brook Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31025152500559 |
Checked out 05/15/2024 |
| Pound Ridge Library District | BIO WANG (Text) Biography |
31026151034459 |
Checked out 05/06/2024 |
| Purchase Free Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31027150630446 |
Checked out 05/08/2024 |
| Rye Free Reading Room | LIVES - WANG (Text) Nonfiction |
31028153341643 |
Available - |
| Scarsdale Public Library | BIO WANG (Text) Biography |
31029154450771 |
Checked out 05/15/2024 |
| Somers Library | B WANG, QIAN JULIE (Text) Biography |
31031151825187 |
Available - |
| The Field Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31022152312242 |
Checked out 05/14/2024 |
| Town of Pelham Public Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31023151296220 |
On holds shelf - |
| Warner Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31033152102293 |
Available - |
| White Plains Public Library | BIOGRAPHY WANG, QIAN JULIE (Text) Nonfiction |
31544101223238 |
Available - |
| White Plains Public Library | BIOGRAPHY WANG, QIAN JULIE (Text) Nonfiction |
31544101223279 |
Available - |
| White Plains Public Library | BIOGRAPHY WANG, QIAN JULIE (Text) Nonfiction |
31544101242196 |
Available - |
| Yonkers Crestwood Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31035162247828 |
Available - |
| Yonkers Grinton I. Will Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31035162513062 |
Available - |
| Yonkers Riverfront Library | B WANG (Text) Biography |
31035612064468 |
Checked out 05/15/2024 |
