dnf at 38%. there's nothing inherently wrong with this book. it's just not hitting the way i need it to and it really isn't as introspective as i was hoping. mostly it was my failure to understand how key the "childhood" part of "beautiful country: a memoir of an undocumented childhood" was going to be as apparently this book never escapes her youth. even if it was told entirely through tableaus of her childhood, i would have liked more retrospection of the reality that child wang qian did not recognize in the moment and context on how these events culminate in who qian julie wang is now.