Girl 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 show more to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. show less

I loved this story about 11-year-old Kimberly Chang and her “Ma” who came from Hong Kong to Brooklyn in search of a better life.

Kim’s wealthy Aunt Paula paid for their passage to America, and set them up in a roach and rat infested apartment in Brooklyn without heat. Ma went to work in the filthy garment factory owned by Aunt Paula’s husband, where Ma, like the others, was secretly paid by the piece, an illegal practice. Kim soon began helping her mother out after school, along with other children there illegally, who came to help their parents make their work quotas.

In spite of all the challenges, including no knowledge at first of the English language, Kim managed to excel in school, and soon got a full scholarship to a show more private school. But she kept up her friendship with a girl she met at her first school, Annette Avery, who also changed to the private school, and a boy she got to know in the factory, Matt Wu. She didn’t understand her feelings for Matt until they were older, and he started dating someone else: a beautiful Chinese girl named Vivian. But there was always something between them.

Kim decided that to get her and Ma out of their bad situation, she would simply have to work harder and longer than anyone else in school so she could get a good job someday. But she also had to learn to navigate the tricky waters of jealousy from the other kids, and from Aunt Paula. Her aunt not only held their immediate fate in her hands, but she resented that Kim did better than her own similarly-aged son Godfrey.

The very end of the book is an epilogue that begins twelve years after the first part ends, when Kim is in her senior year in high school.

Discussion: There is so much that is good about this book. The story of Kim and her ma is told with such affection and compassion for the characters by the author that you can’t help feeling the same. The other characters are drawn with an excellent eye, such as Kim’s first public school teacher - he is not such a good person, but unfortunately very typical of tired and frustrated teachers in poor public schools. Even the evil Aunt Paula is portrayed in a sufficiently nuanced manner that you understand why she acts the way she does, and you can feel sympathy for her, which is not easily accomplished with a character that nasty.

The author is so clever at helping us understand the threads that connected all the parts of Kim’s life. For example, at the factory, Kim and Ma were paid 1.5 cents per skirt bagged, and Kim started to calculate whether or not they could afford something by how many skirts it cost:

“In those days, the subway was 100 skirts just to get to the factory and back, a package of gum cost 7 skirts, a hot dog was 50 skirts, a new toy could range from 300 to 2,000 skirts.”

The author also rendered dialogue in a manner that showed in italics the words Kim didn’t understand at first, with the sentences gradually having less and less of these italicized words. As one example, when the principal of her public school talked to Kim about getting accepted at the better private school and the need for recommendations:

“‘I know of several good schools, if you should need some names,’ she said. . . . Do you want some recordy shunts?” [meaning recommendations].

We not only see what words Kim still didn’t know, but how they sounded to her. We also learn that often, she does not understand a word or concept because in her previous culture, practices were different. Illustrating this, there are a number of Chinese customs and sayings included in the story, all explained by our narrator Kim.

What was most interesting to me was that the biggest cultural conflict in the book is not between the Chinese and non-Chinese, but between two of the main Chinese protagonists, one of whom believes in the "old ways" and the other who is looking to the future.

Evaluation: I hope readers will not eschew reading this book because of reluctance to read about another culture they think may not be relevant to their own experiences. This book is first and foremost about the human condition and human emotions which we all share - love, hope, despair, jealousy, determination, and perseverance. The story is engaging and engrossing, and the experiences so seemingly true-to-life that I wasn’t too surprised to learn that a good bit of it was autobiographical. show less

What a fabulous novel by a first time author! I had just finished reading Shanghai Girls by Lisa See and was afraid that I wouldn't enjoy "another" Chinese American immigration story. I couldn't have been more wrong. The story line can break your heart with its clear, unpitying description of the utter poverty and isolation some new immigrants face, and yet never does the plot cross the line into maudlin sappiness. The heroine of the story, 11-year-old Kimberly, is brilliant and hard-working, but saved from the stereotype of "hard-working immigrant makes good" by her confused efforts that sometimes make things worse and her adolescent angst. I honestly had no idea how the book would end and enjoyed it to the last page.

In addition to a show more great plot, Jean Kwok is simply a fantastic writer. From concise description to well-drawn characters to dialogue devices such as the use of italics in conversations to show words that Kimberly misunderstood, Kwok is a master of her craft. I can not wait to read more from this talented new author. Kudos! show less

There’s a Chinese saying that the fates are winds that blow through our lives from every angle, urging us along the paths of time. (4)

Despite the cold, I was sweating. What if I ran into Mr. Bogart or one of the kids from my class recognized me? I’d never done anything similar before. Like any good Chinese girl, I’d always followed the rules and been glad to be praised by the teachers. But the only alternative was going into Mr. Bogart’s classroom again. I was learning about desperation. (35)

It was freezing during those days I played hooky in the apartment. After skipping school for almost a week, I saw my first snowfall. Flakes came slanting down from the sky and at first, the concrete sidewalk absorbed them like a sponge. I show more touched the window with my hands, amazed it was cold when it seemed to me that the falling rice should be warm, as if it were a soup. (40)

Ma put aside the skirt and sat down on a stool. She looked at me, “Don’t get too closed to the other children here. Ah-Kim, you must always remember this: If you play with them, learn to talk like them, act like them - what will make you different? Nothing. And in ten or twenty years, you’ll be doing precisely what the older girls are doing, working on the sewing machines in this factory until you’re worn, and when you are too old for that, you’ll cut thread like Mrs. Wu.” (44)

Even stuffed into my clothes, like a lump of sticky rice tied in bamboo leaves, I was still freezing. (49)

“Without my violin, I’d forget who I was.” (Ma) (108)

I did try to ask Ma about wildlife conservation when we had to read an article on it for classes.
“Why would anyone want to save animals like tigers?” she’d asked, baffled. She looked sad. “A baby in our old village in China was taken by one.” (120)

In a way I gave myself the excuse of not even trying to get close to the others because I knew I couldn’t be a part of their lives. I still had my responsibilities at the factory, but even without that, Ma wouldn’t have allowed me to go out anyway. That wasn’t what nice Chinese girls from her background did. (134)

“No, let’s meet earlier. I can get some bears,” Greg said.
While they discussed the logistic of their evening, my mind whirled. A show that started at midnight. And some bears? Then I realized he had to mean the alcoholic drink, beer. (134)

After the dusty, physical work of the factory, the scientific world created a clear and logical paradise where I could feel safe. Just for pleasure, I had started reading library books about subjects we’d touched upon in school: amino acids, mitosis, prokarytoes, DNA forensic, karyotyping, monohybrid crosses, endothermic reactions. And mathematics was the only language I truly understood. It was pure, orderly and predictable. It gave me great satisfaction to work on mathematical puzzles and forget about my real life at the apartment and factory. (158)

“Brains are beautiful,” I said. (213)

But sometimes our fate is different from the one we imagined for ourselves. (249)

‘A bamboo door needs a bamboo door and a metal door needs a metal door.’ (255) show less

Kimberly and her mother immigrate to New York from Hong Kong with the promise of help getting settled from her aunt. Unfortunately, Kimberly's aunt's "help" looks like finding them an illegal apartment with no heat and getting her mom work in one of her and her husband's garment factories, where the workers are illegally paid by the piece. Kimberly knows her only chance of getting out of this situation is working as hard as she can to succeed in school, but the cards are stacked against her -- she barely speaks English. Can she overcome the odds?

I enjoyed this overall. Kimberly is a character you can root for and her struggles and successes are captivating. I didn't care for the accidental pregnancy at the end and the way that was show more resolved, but that was my only complaint. 4 stars. show less

Back in 2000 when my daughter was in sixth grade I started a mother-daughter book group. We read a number of coming of age novels: stories about girls growing up and discovering the world and themselves, and the strong and smart ones overcoming all kinds of adversity, and often with bittersweet endings of lessons learned and prices paid for (ultimately) good, but hard life decisions. Girl in Translation fits that description perfectly.

Kimberly Chang and her mother arrive in the United States in the mid 1990's when she is eleven. Poor and owing money to unscrupulous relatives, they are set up in a horrid apartment and her mother is given a job in a sweatshop clothing factory. Kimberly is a very smart, driven girl and strives to overcome show more language and cultural barriers. She eventually gets into a private school where her intellectual abilities are recognized and nurtured. But outside school she leads a very different life from her privileged New York classmates: she works at the factory for hours every day after school to help support herself and her mother and then comes homes to an unheated, insect and rodent infested apartment where they are forced to keep the oven on just to keep from freezing to death.

Kimberly is also straddling the differences between the insular Chinese culture of her family, the factory and Chinatown and the broader world that her exceptional intelligence opens up to her. She finds love with a Chinese boy, also struggling to support his family, but whose aspirations for his own life and theirs together are so less ambitious and more traditional than hers that she has to make a heart-wrenching and life altering decision as to which path to follow.

I highly recommend this book for young adult readers, especially young women, although other readers will enjoy it too. The author creates believable and interesting characters. We get a look into the immigrant experience, including the reality for many of prejudice, poverty and sweatshop employment. And the story ends not happily ever after, but reflecting the joys and sorrows of life's choices.

And as for my book group: the girls went to college in 2006 and will be graduating this spring. But even after ten years, the mothers still meet just about monthly to drink wine -- and discuss books. I think we will read this one. show less

4.5 stars. Compelling story about Chinese immigrants (mother and daughter), where the mother works in a Chinatown textile sweatshop paid per piece where the daughter excels in school after having to learn English, earning a full merit scholarship to a prestigious prep school. What impressed me most was Kwok's ability to describe the social isolation experienced by the intellectually gifted. Highly recommended.