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Kimberly Chang has her world turned upside-down when she moves to New York with her mother from their home in Hong Kong. But their new life doesn't quite live up to their expectations - living in a vermin-ridden apartment in Brooklyn, the pair have only an intermittently working oven to keep them warm. They have nothing but debt and neither of them speak a word of English. While her mother works to earn two cents a garment at a sweatshop, intellectually gifted eleven-year-old Kim faces a new and trying challenge: school. Exiled by language, estranged in a new culture and weighed down by staggering poverty, Kim must learn to translate not just her language but who she is, as she straddles these two very different worlds.
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Subjects
Fiction, Mothers and daughters, Chinese American teenagers, Chinese, Women immigrants, Chinese fiction, New york (n.y.), fiction, Chinese americans, fiction, Mothers and daughters, fiction, Fiction, family life, Fiction, coming of age, Large type books, Fiction, family life, generalPlaces
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Girl in translation
2010, Center Point Pub.
in English
- Center Point large print ed.
160285887X 9781602858879
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Adult.
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When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn, Kimberly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker at night. Disguising the difficult truths of her life -- like the extent of her poverty, the degree to which her family's future rests on her, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition -- Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself between the worlds she straddles. Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to family, and their personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. In an indelible voice, Jean Kwok has written a classic novel of the immigrant experience -- a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation. (Bestseller)
Ah-Kim Chang and her mother immigrate to Brooklyn, where they work for Aunt Paula in a Chinatown clothing factory. Kim's hard work earns her a place at an elite private school, where she is befriended by Annette, who helps her adjust to America.
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