Reviews - Beautiful Country

2.23k reviews for:

Beautiful Country

Qian Julie Wang

4.25 AVERAGE

cadefritz's review against another edition

4.5

challenging emotional inspiring sad fast-paced

heathertom's review against another edition

5.0

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

sverville's review against another edition

5.0

emotional informative inspiring sad fast-paced

lilydoyle6's review against another edition

3.0

emotional hopeful informative sad slow-paced

this book was a vulnerable and honest look into her life as an undocumented child in new york. the trials and tribulations and trauma of what that means and how to survive. at times, i felt so heartbroken and sad that this was her reality - and so many people’s realities today - and wanted better for her and her family. i’m glad we got to see a glimpse of that at the end.

this definitely reads like a debut and while the story of her childhood was interesting & important to read, the story felt unbalanced since we didn’t get to see anything past their life once they moved to canada. i don’t want to minimize her experience and childhood, but most of the book was repetitive and told the same story with different actions, which goes back to the repetitive, unbalanced feel to the book.

a great memoir to read and happy to get the feeling from the acknowledgements section that her life turned out beyond her wildest dreams. but i feel like to get the full impact of her story, it would’ve been nice to read about how her childhood dreams mentioned in the story came true. or to see a resolution to the wrist issue that was mentioned several times. it shows a reality of the “american dream”: that people come here for a better life, and this country offers next to no support & causes people to be fearful & looking over their shoulders, working difficult jobs with terrible pay, etc. it takes a lot for that dream to come true and i’m glad it seems qian’s comes true.

but a good, impactful, quick memoir to read.