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020    9780593313008|q(pbk.) 
020    9780385547215|q(hbk.) 
020    0385547218|q(hbk.) 
020    9780385547215 : HRD|q(hardcover) 
020    0385547218 : HRD|q(hardcover) 
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082 00 974.7/10049510092 
092    BIO|bWANG 
100 1  Wang, Qian Julie,|d1987-|eauthor. 
245 10 Beautiful country :|ba memoir /|cby Qian Julie Wang. 
250    First edition. 
264  1 New York :|bDoubleday,|c[2021]. 
264  4 |c©2020 
300    x, 305 pages ;|c25 cm 
336    text|btxt|2rdacontent 
337    unmediated|bn|2rdamedia 
338    volume|bnc|2rdacarrier 
520    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, 
       this is an essential book about the cost of making a home 
       in a hostile land from an astonishing new talent. 
600 10 Wang, Qian Julie,|d1987-|xChildhood and youth. 
600 10 Wang, Qian Julie,|d1987-|xFamily. 
650  0 Chinese Americans|zNew York (State)|zNew York|vBiography. 
650  0 Immigrants|zNew York (State)|zNew York|vBiography. 
650  0 Noncitizens|zNew York (State)|zNew York|vBiography. 
650  0 Illegal immigration|zNew York (State)|zNew York
       |vBiography. 
651  0 Shijiazhuang Shi (China)|vBiography. 
651  0 Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)|vBiography.