Title: Girl in Translation Author: Jean Kwok
Published: April 29, 2010
Genre(s): Realistic/Contemporary
Page Count: 290
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads: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.
Eleven years old, Kimberly moves with her mother to New York from Hong Kong. In spite of a language barrier, she quickly becomes the best student in her class, but struggles to balance her life at a fancy prep school with her life as an illegal worker in a Chinatown sweatshop. In a coming of age tale that’s something like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the 21st century reader, Girl in Translation is the story of Kimberly and the fine line she walks as she takes every opportunity to improve her situation.
What I like best about this book is how it takes assumptions about Chinese immigrants and their experiences, and twists them to portray the truth. (Not that there is only one narrative or universal experience for any group of people.) Girl in Translation takes stereotypes and rises above them. Sure, Kimberly has an extremely high academic performance, and sure, her mother has a deeply ingrained sense of family loyalty—but those traits don’t define them or seem fake. The fact that Jean Kwok was once in the same position as her protagonist shows, and this story has authenticity and realism to back it up.
Yet though there’s so much good in Girl in Translation, I didn’t love this book—mainly for the plot and how the last few chapters played out. By the end, it was Kimberly’s romance the provided most of the tension, and while I thought Kwok did a lovely job talking about Kimberly’s life up to that point, the romantic complications she introduced felt tacked on and awkward. The “epilogue” chapter in particular felt really cheesy.
So, I give Kwok points for the way this novel looks into the truth behind an immigrant’s day-to-day life and the unique issues involved. Conversely, I wasn’t too keen on the direction Girl in Translation ultimately went. It’s still a good book, one that I enjoyed; I just don’t think it is the best.
