Girl in Translation: Jean Kwok - Softcover

Kwok, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141042745 ISBN 13: 9780141042749

Publisher: Penguin, 2011

Synopsis

New York Times bestseller Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok is a powerful story about a Chinese immigrant family in Brooklyn.

Kimberley Chang and her mother move from Hong Kong to New York. A new life awaits them - making a new home in a new country. But all they can afford is a verminous, broken-windowed Brooklyn apartment. The only heating is an unreliable oven. They are deep in debt.

And neither one speaks one word of English.

Yet there is hope. Eleven-year-old Kim goes to school. And though cut off by an alien language and culture and forced by poverty to work nights in a sweatshop - she finds the classroom challenges liberating. In books and learning she'll be saved. But can Kim successfully turn to lost girl from Hong Kong into a happy American woman? And should she?

Jean Kwok's powerful and moving tale of hardship and triumph, of heartbreak and love, speaks of all that gets lost in translation.

'A sensitively handled rites-of-passage account...has the unmistakable ring of authenticity' Metro

'A truly amazing story that'll leave you full of admiration and affection for the characters' Easy Living

'A classic and moving immigration story' Red

Jean Kwok emigrated from Hong Kong to Brooklyn as a child; her first novel Girl in Translation is based loosely on her own experience as a Chinese immigrant in America. With Girl in Translation Jean Kwok has won the American Library Association Alex Award, an Orange New Writers title and international critical acclaim.

About this title

Review:

Warm, affecting, a compelling pleasure. Manages that rare fictional feat of shifting forever the angle from which you look at the world (Daily Mail)

A sensitively handled rites-of-passage account . . . has the unmistakable ring of authenticity (Metro)

Deceptively delicate . . . the stumbling endurance of Kimberley, the bond between mother and daughter, and the clever use of Chinese culture and tradition make for more than a salutary read (Guardian)

Incredibly honest and powerful, written with unflinching directness . . . a truly amazing story that'll leave you full of admiration and affection for the characters (Easy Living)

Engagingly narrated, irresistible (Independent)

Astonishing (Vogue)

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 this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0141042745
• ISBN 13: 9780141042749
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304