Girl in Translation

(Paperback)

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'A sensitively handled rites-of-passage account . . . has the unmistakable ring of authenticity' Metro Kimberly 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 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 the 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 truly amazing story that'll leave you full of admiration and affection for the characters' Easy Living 'A classic and moving immigration story' Red

Reviews

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 *

Author Bio

Jean Kwok was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Brooklyn as a young girl. Jean received her bachelor's degree from Harvard and completed an MFA in Fiction at Columbia. She worked as an English teacher and Dutch-English translator at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and now writes full-time. She has been published in Story Magazine and Prairie Schooner.