Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

In this bittersweet memoir, which is on Obama's 2021 reading list, the author teaches those of us who do not already know it that in Mandarin the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to beautiful country. Qian's family flees China under a dark cloud and emigrate illegally to the United States in order to escape. Unfortunately, when she arrived as a seven-year-old in New York City in 1994 full of hope and curiosity, she is overwhelmed by fear and scarcity. They have no money, very limited food, and the dread of being found out. In China, Qian's parents were professors; in America, her family is undocumented and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. It all takes a toll. In Chinatown, Qian's parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of focusing on their only child, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. She discovers herself to be on the bottom of the American caste system. She is shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, so Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books. There is a happy ending for her, but it is fraught with false starts and pitfalls along the way.