Qian Julie Wang was seven years old when her family fled China and arrived in Brooklyn, joining the population of undocumented immigrants living in fear of deportation. Her parents, both former professors, worked in sweatshops while Julie learned English through library books and tried to be invisible at school. This memoir recreates the texture of her childhood: the cockroach-infested apartment, the hunger when work was scarce, the terror when immigration officers appeared in the neighborhood, the small kindnesses and brutal exclusions she encountered. Wang writes with a child's perspective, capturing both the confusion of not understanding her situation and the precocious awareness that came from having to navigate adult dangers. The book examines how poverty and illegality shaped every aspect of her family's life, from her parents' diminished status to her own sense of never belonging. Yet it also celebrates the resilience and love that sustained her family and the teachers and neighbors who helped them survive. Wang, who eventually became a lawyer, writes without bitterness but with clear-eyed recognition of the system that made her childhood so precarious. Readers will find here both a compelling coming-of-age story and a window into the lives of the millions of undocumented families living in America's shadows.