Bestselling Author Visits Stuyvesant

For most students, it’s not common to meet and talk with a bestselling author in person, much less likely the one they are reading in class. However, New York Times bestselling author Qian Julie Wang visited English teacher Annie Thoms’s Freshman Composition classes on December 8, 2025 to discuss her debut memoir Beautiful Country. This book, whose title comes from the translation of “America” in Mandarin, is about her family’s escape from China as political dissidents and the challenges they faced in America as undocumented immigrants. After Wang’s visit, she briefly emailed with The Spectator for a short interview. In both this interview and during her visit, she discussed her writing process, what motivated her to write, and the significance of her Chinese culture.

Thoms was moved by Beautiful Country after her mother gifted her a copy and she attended a paperback launch party for the book. “I read the book and then it just kind of stayed in my mind over time,” Thoms commented. After teaching Beautiful Country to her ninth-grade classes, Thoms reached out to Wang, who agreed to visit Stuyvesant for a discussion. 

Many students felt that seeing Wang in person helped bring her memoir to life. “When she came into the room, I felt like it was true and that it was actually her story. She seemed like any lady I would walk past on the streets of New York. This gave me insight [into] how everyone has their own story and relevance in this world,” freshman Avril Wei said. 

Freshman Sici Ma had a similar opinion. “We read her book, and even though she’s relieving all of her past traumas, it still sort of felt like she was superhuman. But then, when she came, it made her feel more human,” Ma said, explaining how Wang’s story felt like fiction before her visit.

Writing a memoir had always been a plan for Wang, who loved books as a child. In Beautiful Country, Wang writes about her visits to the library; in her interview, she expanded on how those visits motivated her. “I’ve always known that I wanted to write a memoir. When I was learning English from books at Chatham Square library in the ‘90s, I noticed that there were so many people living like us, but none of us were in the books. It made me feel even more invisible. When I told my mother this early on, she said that it was my duty to write such a book,” Wang recalled.

Wang’s writing process highlights her work ethic. Wang drafted Beautiful Country in her notes app while on her subway commute to her job as a managing partner of Gottlieb & Wang LLP, an educational civil rights law firm. “I had very little time to spare, and the casualness of it freed me to write more openly than other methods might have permitted,” Wang described. For Wang, it was drafting in her notes app, a low-pressure format, that made starting her book easier. Despite her lack of contacts in the publishing world, after sending it to literary agents online in 2020, her book was published within a year.

Stuyvesant students who attended her talk said they felt the impact of Wang’s story. “Her book really resonated with me because I come from an Asian immigrant background, and I shared so many experiences,” freshman Ella Lee shared. “When I was reading through the book with all of my classmates, it felt like déjà vu.” 

Others, such as Wei, felt that her memoir was both relatable and different from their lives. “As a Chinese American myself, I felt like the book really portrayed the diversity among an ethnic group in New York. Qian Julie Wang highlighted how, even with cultural differences aside, all Chinese people do not live the same in America. Growing up in New York City, I feel like I was able to see many different people from very different backgrounds despite being in the same culture,” Wei commented. Despite also being Chinese, she recognizes that Wang had a very different experience from hers. 

At the visit, Wang recalled a poignant moment that motivated her to keep writing about being undocumented in America—stories that too often go unheard. When Wang was in Chicago on her book tour, two teenage boys stayed back to meet her. “They shyly revealed that they had taken several buses and trains across Illinois to come see me, that they and their parents had a lot in common with me and mine, and that they had never met someone who spoke so openly of lives resembling theirs,” Wang recalled. It was powerful for Wang to know that her book could provide comfort and guidance to readers with similar experiences. “Seeing a book like this on the shelves could have very well changed the self-image I had growing up,” Wang said.

As Wang revealed intimate details about her parents’ painful relationship with her as a child, Thoms’s students became interested in how her parents reacted to her book. In Beautiful Country, Wang describes her parents giving her a huge amount of responsibility as a young child. She worked sewing buttons in factories in Chinatown, took care of her mother, and learned to read and write by herself. Wang discussed some of her parent’s reactions: “I think the book brought out their deepest shames—my mother’s first response was, ‘now the whole world will know what an awful mother I was.’” While this was a painful experience, it was also therapeutic, bringing up wounds buried deep. “We’ve been able to talk about things that we never processed nor discussed, and in that way, it’s given us healing and closure beyond my wildest imaginings,” Wang said.

After questions were asked about her parents’ reactions, she reflected on how becoming a mother herself changed her view of how her parents raised her. “I am very fortunate to have gotten the chance to choose to have a child when I felt emotionally and financially ready, when I had been through many years of therapy and processing, when I had made my way to some semblance of stability in my career. My parents never had that chance, so it is hard to say how they may have parented given similar privileges [...] Being a parent has opened my eyes to the love and wonder at the root of all human life; how all of us, before trauma touched us, were once joyful and loving,” Wang explained. “That gives me great compassion for everyone I come upon—and that includes myself and my parents.” 

Wang’s Chinese identity is woven throughout her relationship with her childhood, her name, and her life now. Growing up, she saw many examples of famous Qians who were all male, and in college, she investigated the origin of her name. “My given name, 乾, represents the masculine, creative force in the bagua, the eight trigrams in Chinese culture,” she explained. “In the pairing of Qian-Kun, Qian is the heavens, the paternal force, while Kun is the earth, the maternal force.” Her name was traditionally male and continued to both influence her view about herself and serve as a reminder of the constant pressure her parents placed on her in childhood. “Learning this etymology sent me to the realization that my parents had believed and wished me to be a boy, and that my first act of life was to disappoint them,” Wang said. 

Visiting China still brings up strong and mixed feelings for Wang. “The loss and heartache that comes with immigration is so much more palpable when you return to your birthplace,” she said. Wang knows that China is a special place for her and it always will be. However, she would never move back. “The heartache of immigration lives in this common refrain: you can’t really go home again,” she explained. 

In her memoir, despite Wang’s description of the painful and traumatic experiences she endured, she continues to call New York home. “Neither the city nor I have ever stopped evolving, trying to make our relationship lasting and meaningful. That’s what makes it a true home for me,” she declared. 

Freshman Sofia Bolon recalled Wang’s comment about the first time she felt like New York was her home. “The first day she felt at home in the Beautiful Country was when she saw the lights during Christmas time, showing the light within her dark experiences,” described Bolon, reflecting on the beauty within Wang’s difficult childhood. 

New York’s changing attitudes towards Mandarin-speakers was a big topic of discussion. In Beautiful Country, Wang speaks about being bullied for speaking Mandarin rather than Cantonese. However, she noted, “New York’s Chinese American population has changed significantly in the past thirty years—so many more new immigrants are Mandarin-speaking. The stigma has completely gone away, and I’m happy about that.” Though an unfortunate motivation, the increase in Asian hate due to COVID-19 helped to unify the Chinese people in New York, rather than dividing them.

Thoms reemphasized Wang’s hope to educate and spread the story of being an Asian immigrant. “Especially for the population of this school, I think it is incredibly valuable to have an author who is coming from a Chinese American immigrant experience,” Thoms said. Whether this book serves as a window into another life or a mirror into yours, Beautiful Country provides education, relatability, and entertainment for Stuyvesant students, and Wang’s story is sure to inspire all who choose to read it.