Girl in translation

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn, Kimberly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day and Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings.

She disguises the more difficult truths of her life, including her poverty and her secret love for a factory boy.

Through Kimberly's story, Jean Kwok exposes the lives of countless immigrants caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires.

The novel dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood.

It is a classic American immigrant novel, a story of hardship, triumph, heartbreak, and love, and all that gets lost in translation.