Anne's Reviews > Girl in Translation

I've been in a really weird place with books lately. Over the past weeks I've read a lot of books and so far no one has been affective enough to motivate me to go raving. I'm on what you can refer to as the eternal hunt. But what can I say?


I read Girl in Translation after reading Nina's little convincing review - which you can read here if you like(Thank you Nina!). Now while Girl in Translation didn't really ensorcell me, it did do something. The story of Kimberly - Ah Kim - Chang is a very honest one, the story of a Chinese girl who immigrates to America with her mother in hopes of a better lucrative life. They carry along with them hopes and dreams and very honeyed expectations - which were soon crushed like mine were over the past few weeks with every last page of every book I turned. But moving on.

For years, I calculated whether or not something was expensive by how many skirts it cost. In those days, the subway was 100 skirts just to get to the factory and back, a package of gum cost 7 skirts, a hot dog was 50 skirts, a new toy could range from 300 to 2,000 skirts. I even measured friendship in skirts.

▶ Kimberly's story is related in reminiscences, using the first person narrative. The story starts with Kimberly's arrival in America, and follows her through high school and her life as a factory worker until about the last 7% of the book when the narration switches to the present. I think there's a subtle wonderfulness to this story. It's such a relatable story that involves day to day recounts of activities, Kimberly and her mother's struggles and strives, financially and culturally. There's such a great importance placed on the benefits of education, as Kimberly tells us in the beginning, her talent isn't singing, it isn't dancing or speed-texting(believe it or not this is actually a real talent in the light of the technological age). Kimberly's talent was school and learning. And some might say

BUT why not? Education can also be a talent - that's what I learnt from this book. It was Kimberly's ticket to a better life, her one golden ticket out of the rat and roach infested decrepit apartment she was forced to live in, out of the oddities and privations that came with her foreignness. I found it effective how the author delivered some conversations and sentences from characters not as a fluent English speaker would hear them but as Kimberly heard them. With her very lacking and basic knowledge of English she understood words like "ghetto" as "get dough", "extend" as "ex-T" or "window sill" as "winnie seal".

I loved Kimberly as a protagonist, she was simply a model character - and that isn't to say she did no wrong. For me, It was so easy to find parts of myself in her. It was disheartening to see that while every book does need a villain, the villain in this book happened to be family. Through Kimberly's experience we see how awful and undignified it is to be at the mercy of someone, anyone. And maybe life had rubbed her in the wrong way but it bestowed upon her gifts like determination and perseverance and a drive to succeed, and most of all a great appreciation for the little things that should count for a lot. But in the end, following all that was the main rub rob(is more appropriate). Sacrifice, and the hard ground truth that life doesn't always go the way we planned and we might have to give A LOT to get back and reach a state of fulfillment - or a sense of it at least. You might not end up the way you want

You may need to change your dreams. My little heart, listen.

But sometimes our fate is different from the one we imagined for ourselves.

You might not end up with who you want. And that love will become a passing but lingering thing.

In those days, I wanted to believe our love was something tangible and permanent, like a good luck charm I could always wear around my neck. Now I know that it was more like the wisp of smoke trailing off a stick of incense: most of what I could hold on to was the memory of the burning, the aftermath of its scent.

I know this book touched something in me. It was so real and after I read it I knew it had to mean something to the author(something meaning something more, assuming all books mean something to the people who wrote them), I listened to Jean Kwok talk about Girl in Translation and earned a new found respect for her work. Kwok shares her wishes and in the aftermath of Girl in Translation she hopes this of people:
"Well the next time I see a foreigner who looks funny and has weird bags and can’t even speak English, that they might think, Oh this could be a person who in her own language and culture is a very articulate, wise, funny person, just like Kimberly Chang’s mother"

I love this Kwok's final lines all the more because I love Kimberly Chang's mother, and her relationship with her daughter was exemplary - which was also one of the nicest parts of this book. In all honesty, after listening to that speech I wish I could say my eyes won't be quicker to judge than my brain to not judge, but I think the fact that I'm bothered and aware of it is a start.