Beautiful Country follows Qian and her family (Ma Ma and Ba Ba), outlining the hardships they faced as undocumented immigrants from China coming to America, Mei Guo, or "The Beautiful Country". Qian's parents held respected positions as professors in China, so why do the only offers of work come from sweat shops and other forms of labor that are far below their worth? This is just one of the many examples of the struggles the Wang family faced. Beautiful Country follows these through the eyes of a child, leaving the reader contemplating how beautiful this country really is.

My resolution for 2022 was to get out of mainly reading books by white people in order to broaden my world view, support not white authors, and hopefully come away from the experience with better understanding of my own privilege and how I should leverage that to do good for others who don't have it, always. Beautiful Country absolutely did that for me. As I read through young Julie's anxieties and realizations about money, her undocumented status, and how other white people saw her I felt the weight of the safety nets I have had my entire life and I wished I could go back in time and extend some of them to this bright and loving child. This memoir vividly painted an image of the "best country in the world" laughing in the face of intelligent, skilled immigrants and what they have to offer; whittling their existence down to "non-English speaking immigrant", and treating them as such. As a teacher, this book offered more to me than I ever could have anticipated. I teach in an underserved community and while there were times of struggle throughout my childhood it was nothing close to what Qian described. Beautiful Country offered me experiences that some of my very own students are going through that I will never understand as a white woman, broadening my already deep empathy for my amazing kids. I am thankful to have read this, please do the same.