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Girl in Translation

by Jean Kwok

Girl in Translation

by Jean Kwok

When Kimberly Chang and her mother leave Hong Kong for New York, they are submerged into a life they were scarcely prepared for. Within the squalor of their Brooklyn apartment and bathed in the soft glow of an oven—their only source of heat—they battle the coldness of poverty. Kimberly, a brilliant schoolgirl by day, transforms into a factory worker by night in a Chinatown sweatshop. Straddling two incomparable worlds, she hides the bleakness of her reality through the veil of her academic success. Yet as she navigates her dual life, the lines blur, and Kimberly’s struggle for identity and a better future becomes a question of what she's willing to sacrifice. Intensely personal and beautifully narrative, 'Girl in Translation' touches upon the immigrant experience with a gentle, yet piercing authenticity, revealing the internal skirmishes that come with uprooting one's life in pursuit of the American dream.

  • Family Life
  • Fiction
  • Coming of Age
  • Asian American
  • Poverty
  • Identity
  • Immigration
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