- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
As much as I LOVE to read and absolutely LOVE sharing a book I’ve loved with my fellow readers, writing a book review may prove to be a challenge. I’m almost wondering whether I would be better off making a video just telling you all how much I loved Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok and that you all need to read it!
Because that’s the gist of it. I really really enjoyed Girl in Translation, it’s the kind of book that when you finish it you want to either find someone else who will read it, or get someone else to read it just so you have someone to discuss it with.
I read so much that I usually know pretty early on in a book whether or not I’m going to like it or not. Girl in Translation was one of those books that within a few pages I just knew I was going to like. It read so true that at times you wonder whether or not it was written based on a true story rather than fiction. I have to note that the author Jean Kwok has a similar background so I assume that while this isn’t listed as a memoir, there must be a good bit of shared experiences. (I went and checked and my hunch was accurate, check out Jean Kwok's website to read her life story.)
Girl in Translation is told through the voice of 11-year-old Kimberly Chang, who, along with her mother has just arrived in New York as an immigrant from Hong Kong. They are full of hope that they will have a better life in America. You have no other choice but to be hopeful along with them, hopeful that someone somewhere will take notice of their dire living and working situations and pluck them out of it and turn their lives around. But like I said this book is too much like real life to offer an easy turn around, rather their situation get worse.
They live in a rundown apartment in Brooklyn that has no heat. As they suffer through the New York winter their apartment is so cold that the insides of the windows become icy. Kim’s mother, once a music instructor, now works at a sweatshop run by her older sister, who seems bent on keeping the two of them as firmly under her thumb as possible. Kim faces the seemingly impossible task of going to and succeeding at school while barely understanding English, and working with her mother at the sweatshop afterwards.
I felt so infuriated at Kim’s teacher’s who marked her intelligence by her inability to speak and comprehend English and at Aunt Paula whose cruelty to her younger sister and niece seems unthinkable. But Kim and her mom take all the unfairness and injustice thrown their way and continued to work through it and persevere. It was a hard book to read only in that you never felt like they were safe from tragedy and sometimes it was hard to imagine how they could keep themselves going. Like I said you can’t stop hoping with them, because they both work so hard and are so determined to be positive and celebrate life despite their hardships.
The story is heart-wrenching and also uplifting, but for me the thing that made the book a must-read was the voice of Kimberly Chang. You get to journey with her as she struggles to make sense of her new surroundings and adjust from being the smartest kid in school, to be being made fun of by her teacher because of her broken English. Her growth and adaption into her new home and culture, while still living with her mother who barely speaks English was so compelling. You will find yourself just willing her to succeed, to make it, to show everyone around her how special and gifted she truly is.
Girl in Translation is a must-read coming of age book -- I highly recommend it!
