Girl in Translation

By: Jean Kwok

Narrated by: Grayce Wey

From the author of Searching for Sylvie Lee, the iconic, New York Times-bestselling debut novel that introduced an important Chinese-American voice with an inspiring story of an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures.

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life—like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, 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 back and forth 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 their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant-a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.

Absorbing and honest look at the life of an immigrant

Great story that was so honest it has to be part memoir, and indeed when I looked up Kwok's website, it does closely mirror that of her own. It does come off a bit trite at times, but I appreciated the peek into a life that many of us might never understand. Fascinating. The narrator was ok, a little weak at times, and I do think parts of the story are improved with a Chinese immigrant accent.

just okay

It wasn't worth the rating audible customers gave it.
Interesting in a voyeur sort of way

Well written insightful view of the life of a Chinese immigrant

I thought the narrator did a great job with this story. It is a well written biography of a Hong Kong Family making their own way in NYC.

great book

Loved the book. The narrator was amazing! She read as if telling the story 1st hand.

Inspiring story, incredibly performed!

I wish this book never ended. A frequently funny, sometimes tear-jerking American success story with the most lovable protagonist I have encountered in ages.