She is now managing partner of Gottlieb & Wang LLP, a firm dedicated to advocating for education and civil rights. She wrote Beautiful Country on her iPhone, during her subway commute to and from work at a national law firm, where she was elected to partnership within two years of joining the firm. Qian Julie's first book is a poignant literary memoir that follows the family through those years, as they grappled with poverty, manual labor in sweatshops, lack of access to medical care, and the perpetual threat of deportation.Ī graduate of Yale Law School and Swarthmore College-where she juggled classes and extracurriculars with four part-time jobs-Qian Julie is now a litigator. For five years thereafter, the three lived in the shadows of undocumented life in New York City. At age 7, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, with her parents. Qian Julie was born in Shijiazhuang, China. Searing and unforgettable, Beautiful Country is an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light. The number-one rule in America still stands: 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 headstrong and 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 or watching her sing and dance, they fight constantly.
In Chinatown, Qian’s parents work in 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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