Civil Rights Advocate Qian Julie Wang with Angie Coiro

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Civil rights advocate Qian Julie Wang came to her current work after a decade of commercial litigation experience and a childhood haunted by the threat of deportation.

In an event produced by Doubleday in collaboration with Kepler’s Literary Foundation, Bookshop Santa Cruz and Book Soup, we are excited to host this talent-on-the-rise for Beautiful Country, a searing and hotly anticipated new memoir of growing up poor and undocumented in the wealthiest country on earth.

In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian Julie arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she experiences crushing fear and scarcity. In China, her parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and trapped in a complex struggle for survival. When headstrong Mama collapses in poor health and Ba Ba retreats into himself, young Qian Julie draws on her own resources, and does her best to hide the family’s status.

Angie Coiro welcomes a strong new voice in the American canon for one of the best books of this year.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.