Beautiful Country: A Memoir of an Undocumented Childhood by Qian Julie Wang

Available from Nook & Cranny Books when we last checked. Sold from the shop’s own store; the price there is the one that counts.

The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world—an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent 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 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joy