Girl in translation by Jean Kwok – Penguin

Kimberly Chang and her mother move from Hong Kong to New York. Aunt Paula is very excited to offer them an accommodation in Brooklyn. She thinks it’s very cheap for what they are getting so they should feel very grateful for the new opportunity. But once they get there, they find out that the place is a verminous, broken-windowed apartment without any heating. The only heating is an unreliable oven.

Kimberly Chang is an exceptionally talented and gifted eleven years old girl who is facing a massive challenge: starting a new life from scratch. Building up a new identity all over again.

Back in Hong Kong, her mother was an accomplished music teacher and Kimberly was doing extremely well in school. But in New York, they are deep in debt.

Yet there is hope. Page 21, her mother would say: “The road we could follow in Hong Kong was a dead one. The only future I could see for us, for you, was here, where you could become whatever, you wanted. Even though this isn’t what we’d imagined back home, we will be all right.”

Kimberly starts going to school and finds it very difficult because she does not know a word of English. After school, every day, she goes to the factory to help her mother in a sweetshop in Chinatown with plenty of sewing machines.

From that point, she starts living and discovering two different worlds. She would meet her new friend, spends time with students from the private school she goes to but she is covering up her own world. She refuses to say where she lives or explains what she does after school every day. From an early age, she is dealing with all sorts of responsibilities. She is losing her innocence by discovering the circle of factory life. Aunt Paula who in his charge of the place declares: “They enter at this table as children and they leave it as grandmas.” So what does her future hold if it is true?

I would highly recommend this book to anyone. I’ve always loved books about immigration. I think I bought it because I was very much intrigued by the title. “Girl in translation”. The book says a lot about how difficult it was for her to learn a new language. For a very long time, she struggled and now she has become a writer. What an inspiring journey !

The main character demonstrates that there is almost a child-parent inversion when children from an early age are dealing with all sorts of roles. They are able to pick up the language often more quickly than their relatives so they would be the ones translating, negotiating, dealing with all sorts of papers (bills, school reports, notifications…). We get to see how the girl is changing over the years. At first, living in extremely poor conditions in a new environment was a big cultural shift. However, her dedication to learn English and her resilience to do anything she could so she would be able to offer another life to her mum was remarkable.

It is a true story but some details such as names or how old are the characters in the books have been changed so it’s a semi-autobiographical work.  

Another bit I really enjoyed was the epilogue. Unpredictable.

This book definitely touched something in me. A truly amazing story of hardship and triumph, of heartbreak and love.