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Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation was one of the May selections for BlogHer Book Club, and we've been talking up a storm about the novel. We opened to the floor to questions from BlogHers, and Jean has obliged by sending us answers! Find out about the time she was accused of cheating, who her favorite authors are and what kinds of books she reads to hone her craft.
Did you have teachers accuse you of cheating? After reading your column about your brother's death (I'm so sorry -- he sounds like a wonderful person), I also wonder how his experience as a young male immigrant differed from yours as a female. - All i'm Saying.
Actually, both of the cheating incidents in the novel were based upon real-life experiences. On my first day of school in the U.S., the teacher distributed pieces of paper with pictures on them. Her voice boomed and everyone started scribbling on their sheets. I was only five. I couldn’t speak a word of English, so I glanced at the boy next to me to try to figure out what we were supposed to do. The teacher took my piece of paper away and wrote a huge zero on it. Later, I found out that we were supposed to circle all of the pictures that were red, and I was so outraged because I could already multiply and read a Chinese newspaper but here, that didn’t matter.
My brother Kwan was also accused of cheating when he did so well on a university examination that the department didn’t think it was possible. They re-examined him orally, and he passed with such flying colors that the entire testing committee congratulated him afterward.
Thank you for your kind words about my brother. I do miss him more than I can say, and it is a consolation that my main character, Kimberly, was partly based on his life as well. As a male in the Chinese hierarchy, Kwan ranked higher than I did, but he needed to prove himself, too, because he was the youngest boy in our family. I think there were advantages and disadvantages to being either gender. Kwan never pulled rank on me because of his “higher” status –- in fact, he often complained about me bossing him around!
Could you talk about the line you walk between "telling a good story" and "spilling too much of the truth"? Did your family have issues with any of the tales you told? - Ashleigh Burroughs
I believe that fiction is the truth disguised as a lie. We love good fiction when it resonates with what we know and feel about the world. That said, I do need to have some distance from certain events in my life before I can use them in my writing. I have to be able to shake the truth loose from me, so that I’m able to use it in the most effective way in a story.
The funny thing is that none of us ever spoke about our past. People who have known me for most of my life didn’t know I worked in a sweatshop or lived in an unheated, roach-infested apartment in Brooklyn until they read my book. It was something we hid, because we were ashamed. I think that this is common for people who come from this kind of difficult past. The wonderful thing is that since the publication of the novel, all of this has changed. Readers have responded with so much warmth and compassion that my family can now say with pride, “Yes, we lived like this, we worked like this. And we survived.”
How do you respond when people say they can't believe that such conditions exist in America? I've been a little ruffled by some of the people who say they "can't believe" sweatshops still exist or that people live the way Kimberly did. Since I've written ESL textbooks for years, I know waaaaay too much about the horrors of the immigrant experience when there is no one to help. I know these places and lives DO exist. But apparently, many people do not. - blondieinchicago
Well, I am glad to hear that there are people like you who know about the difficulties of the immigrant experience! I guess I’m used to people not believing that such conditions
