Nina's Reviews > Girl in Translation

An insightful debut about immigration, hardship, and striving for education and success against all odds, enveloped by a tentative love story.

Threre's a Chinese saying that the fates are winds that blow through our lives from every angle, urging us along the paths of time. Those who are strong-willed may fight thestorm and possibly choose their own road, while the weak must go where they are blown. I say I have not been so much pushed by winds as pulled forward by the force of my decisions.

Girl in Translation follows the storyline of Kimberly Chang, a Chinese girl who migrates to the United States with her mother. The narration beautifully illustrates the struggles of being pushed into a foreign world, where people look different, have other traditions, other norms, and speak an entirely different language. Based on her own childhood experiences as a migrant from Hong Kong, Jean Kwok tells the story of young and exceptionally intelligent Kimberly Chang who finds herself doing the splits between a life in Chinatown, wasting away as a sweatshop worker and living in a run-down apartment, and striving for a successful career at a fancy private school. Kimberly translates herself back and forth between a world where she can barely afford clothes and a world where, in spite of her intelligence, she's supposed to look the part as she reaches for higher education.

It is a tale of survival and beating the odds, but ultimately, it is also a fragile love story in an unforgiving environment.

The narration is raw, honest, and authentic, with the Chinese culture being cleverly woven into the storyline. It provides insight into a world hidden behind the facade of Chinatown, a place where we might order a Sezuan chicken to go and never imagine what may lie beneath the surface.

Girl in Translation provides a powerful message of hope, narrated by a strong and inquisitive character whose mind and soul sometimes seems divided in two.