Girl in Translation
From the author of Searching for Sylvie Lee, the iconic, New York Times-bestselling debut novel that introduced an important Chinese-American voice with an inspiring story of an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures.
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life—like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.
Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant-a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life—like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.
Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant-a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.
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Community Reviews
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok is a moving novel about a young girl and her mother immigrating to New York in order to achieve a better life after the untimely death of the child's father. However, success in America isn't as easily gained as the mother hoped it would be. Now facing poverty, destitution, and a bitter family debt, Ah-Kimberly, the young daughter, fights and claws her way through the American schooling system by day, and a Chinese sweat shop by night, in order to make a better life for her, and her mother.
I would classify this novel a bildungsroman - a coming of age story where the moral and psychological growth of the protagonist from child to adulthood is measured in the great change of the main character. The novel depicts the true struggles of immigrants that come to this country NOT looking for a handout. And the truth of it is, it's hard. Very hard.
The novel shares the living conditions of the naive family as they attempt to make a life in America. They reside in a roach and rat infested apartment found for them by their jealous and superficial Aunt (who runs the sweat shop), where both Ma and Ah-Kimberly barely survive. There is no heat and they sleep under piles of clothing, mostly inadequate, for the harsh winters of Brooklyn. They make ends meet by eating small meals of rice, using their oven to provide heat in the small kitchen, and sewing blankets and clothes out of fabric they find in trash dumps.
The American schooling system is cruel and unforgiving for Ah-Kim. She certainly didn't come through the soft education system of the current times where everyone gets 1,000 chances to do everything, to pass everything. Her teachers, specifically the men, are mean and cruel. They mock her, accuse her of cheating when she does start to make progress, and shame her socially. The kids, well - they are American kids - disrespectful and indifferent to anyone that isn't like them. I cried the most reading about her schooling, especially when she was so young. It pained me, as a teacher, to read the way adults responded to her, to the way the other students treated her, to the indifference of the teacher to help her. But, like a truly intelligent girl, she beats the odds of the public elementary school system and is afforded an opportunity to go to a very private and prestigious private school.
Ah-Kimberly's climb to success is painful and scarred, which makes moments of triumph that much sweeter.
Jean Kwok paints an emotional journey of Ah-Kim and one the reader will not forget. I still feel tightness in my chest when I remember the struggles of this kind, hardworking family of two. I cried multiple times by chapter four, and the pull on the heart only increases as the reader becomes more involved with the story.
This is a book I highly recommend - in fact I'm going to request to teach this book next year in place of To Kill a Mockingbird - that is how strong of an impact it made on me. It gives insight to a different culture and I appreciated reading about the Asian sociodynamics rather than reading yet another book about the black/white dynamic in America. This opened my eyes to the depth and tradition long steeped within Asian communities. It was the perfect book to read after Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (link for this review - found after Reached by Allie Condy on the same post). I enjoyed the distinctness and diversity of the these two novels, both creating a respect for a culture outside of my own.
About the Author (from Amazon author page):
Jean Kwok immigrated from Hong Kong to Brooklyn when she was five and worked in a Chinatown clothing factory for much of her childhood. She won early admission to Harvard, where she worked as many as four jobs at a time, and graduated with honors in English and American literature, before going on to earn an MFA in fiction at Columbia.
Her debut novel Girl in Translation (Riverhead, 2010) became a New York Times bestseller. It has been published in 15 countries and chosen as the winner of an American Library Association Alex Award, a John Gardner Fiction Book Award finalist, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, an Orange New Writers title, an Indie Next Pick, a Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award nominee and the winner of Best Cultural Book in Book Bloggers Appreciation Week 2010. It was featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. The novel was a Blue Ribbon Pick for numerous book clubs, including Book of the Month, Doubleday and Literary Guild. Jean lives in the Netherlands with her husband and two sons.
To learn more about Jean Kwok, you can visit her website at jeankwok.com
I would classify this novel a bildungsroman - a coming of age story where the moral and psychological growth of the protagonist from child to adulthood is measured in the great change of the main character. The novel depicts the true struggles of immigrants that come to this country NOT looking for a handout. And the truth of it is, it's hard. Very hard.
The novel shares the living conditions of the naive family as they attempt to make a life in America. They reside in a roach and rat infested apartment found for them by their jealous and superficial Aunt (who runs the sweat shop), where both Ma and Ah-Kimberly barely survive. There is no heat and they sleep under piles of clothing, mostly inadequate, for the harsh winters of Brooklyn. They make ends meet by eating small meals of rice, using their oven to provide heat in the small kitchen, and sewing blankets and clothes out of fabric they find in trash dumps.
The American schooling system is cruel and unforgiving for Ah-Kim. She certainly didn't come through the soft education system of the current times where everyone gets 1,000 chances to do everything, to pass everything. Her teachers, specifically the men, are mean and cruel. They mock her, accuse her of cheating when she does start to make progress, and shame her socially. The kids, well - they are American kids - disrespectful and indifferent to anyone that isn't like them. I cried the most reading about her schooling, especially when she was so young. It pained me, as a teacher, to read the way adults responded to her, to the way the other students treated her, to the indifference of the teacher to help her. But, like a truly intelligent girl, she beats the odds of the public elementary school system and is afforded an opportunity to go to a very private and prestigious private school.
Ah-Kimberly's climb to success is painful and scarred, which makes moments of triumph that much sweeter.
Jean Kwok paints an emotional journey of Ah-Kim and one the reader will not forget. I still feel tightness in my chest when I remember the struggles of this kind, hardworking family of two. I cried multiple times by chapter four, and the pull on the heart only increases as the reader becomes more involved with the story.
This is a book I highly recommend - in fact I'm going to request to teach this book next year in place of To Kill a Mockingbird - that is how strong of an impact it made on me. It gives insight to a different culture and I appreciated reading about the Asian sociodynamics rather than reading yet another book about the black/white dynamic in America. This opened my eyes to the depth and tradition long steeped within Asian communities. It was the perfect book to read after Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (link for this review - found after Reached by Allie Condy on the same post). I enjoyed the distinctness and diversity of the these two novels, both creating a respect for a culture outside of my own.
About the Author (from Amazon author page):
Jean Kwok immigrated from Hong Kong to Brooklyn when she was five and worked in a Chinatown clothing factory for much of her childhood. She won early admission to Harvard, where she worked as many as four jobs at a time, and graduated with honors in English and American literature, before going on to earn an MFA in fiction at Columbia.
Her debut novel Girl in Translation (Riverhead, 2010) became a New York Times bestseller. It has been published in 15 countries and chosen as the winner of an American Library Association Alex Award, a John Gardner Fiction Book Award finalist, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, an Orange New Writers title, an Indie Next Pick, a Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award nominee and the winner of Best Cultural Book in Book Bloggers Appreciation Week 2010. It was featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. The novel was a Blue Ribbon Pick for numerous book clubs, including Book of the Month, Doubleday and Literary Guild. Jean lives in the Netherlands with her husband and two sons.
To learn more about Jean Kwok, you can visit her website at jeankwok.com
I loved this book! Young girl, Kim, from China adapts to life in New York. Her mother works hard in a clothing factory. Kim is a scholar and you continue to root for her to succeed.
Kimberly is a superstar to me. This brilliant child, described in this book, comes to NYC as a 12 yr old, speaking minimal English with her mother, who can only speak Cantonese. As we follow the progress of her life, from a sweatshop and cockroach infested apartment, it's impressive to see her strength, loyalty and wisdom. We learn so much about Chinese culture and the seamy underbelly of the life of immigrants. And we witness Kimberly's coming of age in a world far from Hong Kong. Poignant and funny, this was a delight to listen to.
For some reason, I was surprised that I enjoyed this book so much. Perhaps my surprise came from the fact that I thought it would be very predictable, but it wasn't. Each time I thought I knew the directions in which Kwok was going to send her characters, I was wrong. Add to that the excellent writing, which pulls you into the story immediately, and I was really impressed by this book.
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