![]() ![]() The # 1 rule in America: to be noticed is to risk losing everything. And yet, young Qian, now acting as her mother’s nurse, her family’s translator, a student, and a worker, cannot ask for help. At home, Qian’s resilient Ma Ma ignores her own pain until she’s unable to stand, too afraid of the cost and attention a hospital visit might bring. ![]() Qian goes to school hungry, where she teaches herself English through library books, her only source of comfort. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly. Qian’s parents work in Chinatown sweatshops and sushi factories. In China, Qian’s parents were professors in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. An incandescent and heartrending memoir from an astonishing new talent, Beautiful Country puts readers in the shoes of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world. ![]()
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