A young Chinese girl forced to work in a New York sweatshop calls child services on her mother in this powerful memoir about labour and self-worth, economic revolution and cultural dislocation.

As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family’s garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American, and such is their tough path in their new country. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life.

Nearly twenty years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her social services report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, and on the brink of losing her job as the once-shiny start-up collapses, Qu looks once more at her life’s truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking meaning in work.

Travelling from Wenzhou to Xi'an to New York, Made in China is a fierce memoir unafraid to ask thorny questions about trauma and survival, capitalism, and the struggle for individual dignity.

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‘Made in China capture[s] the confusion and wonder of lives spent looking … Qu’s narrative is laced with bitterness and aching … The struggle … seems to be holding all of these conflicting emotions at once … Qu honour[s] these complexities, tell us we were not meant to swallow our pain and survive in this world without support systems.’

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‘Qu’s debut memoir untangles the knots of her complicated, traumatic past as she learns the truth about her own history and reckons with the hopes and constraints of the immigrant experience.’

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‘With quick, vibrant prose, Qu’s memoir is absorbing and disturbing in equal measure.’

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‘Qu writes with clarity and restraint about her Cinderella-terrible childhood … Qu’s indelible account of her lonesome childhood should gain her everything she lacked then — confidants, witnesses, and fans — who will cheer when she finally reconnects with a long-lost beloved.’

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‘Qu rewrites the bootstrap narrative of immigrants building a better life for their children in her grim and entrancing debut. Her “path to the American dream” amounts to a devastating story of abuse and abandonment … Even in revisiting her harrowing memories, Qu writes from a place of empathy, transcending pain to embrace hope … This marks the arrival of a promising new voice.’

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‘A nuanced examination of complicated ripple effects of intergenerational emigration. A powerful memoir of finding self-worth.’

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‘A grim yet gripping memoir of an unhappy, nearly loveless childhood and the author’s determined escape to a better adulthood … Well written … Brilliantly insightful … A simultaneously powerful and depressing latter-day Dickensian story sure to elicit sympathy from readers.’

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‘Poignant … Vividly narrated and psychologically perceptive, Qu’s story uses family trauma to find perspective on immigration and perhaps even America itself.’

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‘What will haunt readers are the indelible feelings — of loss, fear, anger, and devastation, but, by book’s end, somehow, she has love … Anna Qu’s unflinching memoir recalls the love of her earliest years and the labour she endured to survive into adulthood.’

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‘Lively … Qu presents her recollections in a precise, distressing chronology that sheds light on both the strictures of her Chinese cultural heritage and the sometimes arbitrary carelessness of the American social system meant to protect youngsters from neglect and mistreatment … Qu writes with great fluidity, giving her memoir a novelistic reach that speaks of a new career path in the realm of words and their truest meanings. Her mastery of English and her memory of several Chinese dialects will give her gritty memories a special punch for those trapped in similar circumstances, whether as immigrants, sweatshop workers, survivors of childhood abuse, or simply strong young women overcoming the odds to gain the best that life has to offer.’

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‘Made in China is a fierce, provocative look at the sacrifices made by immigrants in a new country, and the sacrifices they pass down to the next generation. It’s a story of family and trauma, resilience and collapse, and Qu is dazzling as she dismantles the mythologies surrounding the immigrant work ethic, making clear that a person’s humanity should never be connected with how “productive” they are.’

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‘A heartbreaking reflection of the ripple effects of immigration.’

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‘A harrowing memoir about the indifference we show toward children, especially those who emigrate to the United States.’

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‘A deeply honest rendering of domestic conflict … Made in China is dynamic, a subversive and yet inherently personal piece of work … In this memoir, Qu doesn’t conform to labels. She rips off the tags others have created for her and creates her own.’

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‘Anna’s story shares a similar arc to the likes of Educated and The Glass Castle — memoirs with heroines who overcome seemingly insurmountable disadvantages through education and sheer will.’

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‘Unravels larger assumptions about immigration, labour, and trauma at both the personal and collective level, demonstrating how many seemingly disparate elements of our lives are deeply connected … It is a clear-eyed look at a reality that many in the United States would otherwise look away from … Remarkable.’

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‘Anna Qu has a tough story to tell, and she tells it with graceful candour … Made in China isn’t always an easy read, but it will make you examine the intricacies of mother-daughter love and the indelible influence of intergenerational trauma.’

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‘A skillful and emotive excavation of a traumatic childhood split between China and the United States.’

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‘There are no easy answers here, and that’s what makes this memoir so absorbing.’

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‘This candid, heartbreaking story centres on an uncommon immigrant narrative featuring a complicated mother-daughter relationship intermingled with the dark side of the pursuit of opportunity in America.’

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‘An emotionally-charged memoir about migration, belonging, and family-based abuse, Made In China is a confronting read. Ultimately, though, readers are left with a profoundly enlightening experience, owing to the skill that Qu applies when unpacking the various details of her experience. A profound story whose impact can be felt on a personal and societal level.’

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‘[Made in China] vividly and poignantly documents [Anna Qu's] childhood, the darkness, occasional glimmers of light and, eventually, coming through.’