Beautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang

Qian Julie Wang’s memoir is transportive, immersive, her childhood rendered with such a natural hand that each particular pain and joy feels as intimate as one’s own memory. This acuity is strangely healing—Wang pulls no punches when recalling moments of shame—even as the remoteness of her position as an undocumented immigrant, isolated further from her peers by poverty, is a devastating revelation. Powerful, nuanced, and tender, Beautiful Country is essential reading.

—Chorel