Our first book club selection of the year!
Girl in Translation was a cute, semiautobiographical book that follows Kimberly Chang, an immigrant who arrives in New York City with her mother from Hong Kong. It chronicles Kim’s struggles and adversity as a young girl who has a “knack for school,” working alongside her mother in a sweatshop at night and working through classes and schoolwork to get out of that life during the day.
This was a very interesting book. It makes you uncomfortable at several moments, but you keep reading because it’s so gripping. You want nothing more than the best for Kim and her mother, if only because the squalor that they are put through daily is inhumane and unnecessary. It makes me wonder how much of this is true, and whether people are forced to live like this for the freedom that America offers.
I gave this a 4, mostly because I was unhappy with the way it ended. If it’s what really happened, then ok, but if not, I don’t like it on principle. I don’t feel like I can say anything more than that without explaining myself and spoiling the way the book ends, so I’ll leave it at that, but it was certainly a topic of discussion at book club!
No comments:
Post a Comment