Article Review - Book Report/Review Example

Suki, Kim: Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits. Suki, Kim: Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits. In her article, Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits, published in the New York Times in 2004, Kim Suki describes her experiences in Queens of the early 80’s, both as a thirteen year old immigrant from South Korea, and as a formerly wealthy girl now confronting poverty. Adopting an intimate, autobiographical tone, Suki chronicles the transitions this drastic change in life involves, including using public transport in lieu of “being driven by a chauffeur” (Suki, 2004), doing the household chores in the absence of a maid, and watching her mother go from “a society lady who lunched,” to “a fish filleter at a market” (Suki, 2004).

Suki also recounts the immigrant experience, the culture shock of school, the struggle to master English, and the divisions of class and generation which characterize immigrants. She refers to her generation of immigrants, rooted in both the culture of Korea and the US, as “the so-called 1.5 generation” (Suki, 2004), which figures between the first-generation, whose ignorance of English “traps them in a time-warped immigrant ghetto” (Suki, 2004), and the second generation that speaks “anchorman English” (Suki, 2004).

Suki succeeds in her purpose of giving her readers an intimate glimpse into the angst of the immigrant experience. As she takes us through the travails of an adolescent’s attempt to adjust to poverty, and the conflict of identity faced by an immigrant confronted with a new culture, she conveys the poignancy of being “100 percent American on paper but not quite in our soul” (Suki, 2004). In her account of struggling to master English, her confession of assuming ‘Three’s Company’ to be the name of a firm called ‘Threes,’ and her searching the dictionary for “the definition of words like ‘Pip,’” is particularly moving.

One cannot help but sympathize with Suki’s experiences, and celebrate her obvious future success and assimilation into American society. ReferencesSuki, Kim. (2004). Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits. In Name of Editor, The Brief McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life. Pages. Place: Publisher.