Girl in Translation - Softcover

Jean Kwok

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141042745 ISBN 13: 9780141042749

Publisher: Fig Tree, 2011

Synopsis

When young Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to America, they speak no English and own nothing but debt. They arrive in New York hoeful for a better life, but find instead a squalid Brooklyn apartment and backbreaking labor in a Chinatown sweatshop. Unable to accept this as her future, Kim decides to use her "talent for school" to earn a place for herself and her mother in their adopted country. Disguising the most difficult truths of her meager existence, Kim embarks on a double life: an exceptional student by day, and a sweatshop worker by evening. In time, Kim learns to translate not just her language but herself, back and forth between two worlds, between hardship and triump, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn, Kimberly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker at night. Disguising the difficult truths of her life -- like the extent of her poverty, the degree to which her family's future rests on her, 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 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 family, and their personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about.

In an indelible voice, Jean Kwok has written a classic novel of the immigrant experience -- a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.

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About the Author:

Jean Kwok was born in Hong Kong and emigrated to Brooklyn, New York as a child. She received her bachelor's degree from Harvard and completed an MFA in fiction at Columbia University. After working as an English teacher and Dutch-English translator at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Jean now writes full-time. This is her first novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fig Tree
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0141042745
• ISBN 13: 9780141042749
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304