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Anna Qu

Biography

Anna Qu

Anna Qu is a Chinese American writer. She writes personal essays on identity and growing up in New York as an immigrant. Her work has appeared in Threepenny Review, Lumina, Kartika, Kweli, Vol.1 Brooklyn and Jezebel, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College.

She serves as the Nonfiction Editor at Kweli Journal, and teaches at New England College, Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop and Catapult. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their cat, Momo.

Anna Qu

Books by Anna Qu

Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor
by Anna Qu - Memoir, Nonfiction

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. 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 20 years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work.