Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok - Book Report/Review Example

Girl in Translation 1. What is the author’s Thesis or Theme? How well did he/she support it? Jean Kwok is the author of the book “Girl in Translation”. The main theme of this book is the challenges faced by immigrant youths in school, family and peer relations (Kwok, 2010). The author supports this theme by documenting the life of Kim Chang, a young immigrant to the U.S. from Hong Kong. Kim struggles to adjust to the life of an immigrant in the U.S.; She and her mother languishing in poverty and poor working conditions. Kim enrolls to a local school and struggles to understand the English language. She had learnt English language is Hong Kong but found the accents in the U.S quite different. At school, Kim struggles to make friends since anytime a potential friend request to hang out with her; she makes up an excuse to avoid hanging out with them. Despite her mother, working hard to provide for her, her mother’s income is insufficient and she works at a clothing factory in the evening after school. This is to enable her supplement her mother’s earnings. 2. Who is the author and what is her /his authority? The author of the book ‘girl in translation’ is Jean Kwok, a Chinese American contemporary writer. She was born Hong Kong and moved as an immigrant to Brooklyn in New York. She was five years old at that time. She used to live in a roach infested apartment that lacked central heating and worked in a Chinatown clothing factory during the most of her childhood life. She then got accepted at a public secondary school for the intellectually gifted students known as Hunter College High School. The author’s authority in this book is seen in the way she pictures the life of Kimberly, exactly the same life Kwok experienced. Kim is a young immigrant from Hong Kong to the United States. She experiences poor living conditions and later leads a double life as she juggles between school and working to support her mother. She later excels in life amid all the struggles. The author’s authority in the text can be therefore seen as it is related to her real life experience. 3. What evidence did the author use to support her claim? The author uses the Kimberly experiences in U.S to support her claim. Kwok gives us an accurate insight of the experiences that immigrant communities undergo through the way the characters in the book reveal isolation and the importance of community. She formulates the characters to give a thorough and perceptive vision of the world of the mundane work. Through the perceptive ways, Kwok succeeds in supporting her claim permeation of immigrant life by the culture. 4. Was the book schorlarly? If non-fiction, was the book well documented? What source data did the author use? Primary?Secondary? If a novel, was the author well grounded in feminism? How could you tell that the author was very knowledgeable in the subject? The book is scholarly since the author Jean Kwok holds a Harvard College BA with honors in English and an MFA in fiction from the Columbia University. After working as an English teacher and Dutch-English translator at Leiden University in the Netherlands, she now writes full-time. The book is scholarly since the author tells a story, which is similar to her personal experience. The story is fictional and therefore the author does not employ any primary or secondary sources in her work. It is a novel and the author is well grounded in feminism. This is clearly seen in the creation of the characters in the novel. The main character is a woman who faces with numerous challenges in her life; poverty, adapting to new cultures, and others. She endures all these challenges to finally succeed in life. The author also shows the life experience of Kimberly’s mother as she struggles to raise her child in a new country. The author uses these experiences to support feminism and show that women are strong and can endure the struggles of life. 5. Does the author have any agenda? Did you note any (author) bias? If so, how was it manifested? How did the bias or lack of bias affect your interpretation of feminism? Explain. The author of the book has an agenda in that she wanted US Americans to view their culture from an outsider’s perspective. New immigrants can get numerous aspects of American culture that they can relate. Cultural fanatics can just revel in the story and muse upon assimilation and Chinese/American cultural values. There is no bias noted in this book. The lack of bias affects my interpretation of feminism in that I can now view women as strong beings possessing the same capability as men. They are capable of undergoing various life struggles and still come out successful at the end as seen in the life of Kimberly. 6. How does the author portray ethnicity and gender? How does it relate to what you have read, heard or discussed in WS101? Is he/she ethnocentric? Does the author promote stereotypes? The author portrays gender and ethnicity in the life struggles of Kimberly and her mother. She shows the problems they are faced with stemming from the fact they are women from different ethnic origin from the one they live. This can be related with what I have read in WS101 in that, most women will find it difficult surviving in new cultures particularly due to their gender and the fact that most cultures are yet to view women as being equal to men. The author is ethnocentric; she wants Americans to view their culture from a foreigner’s perspective. The author promotes stereotypes in that she promotes the minority stereotype by showing the Asians as the minorities in U.S (Hartlep, 2013, pg. 1)and also shows how women are faced with numerous life struggles as compared to men. References Kwok, J. (2010). Girl in translation.London: Fig Tree. Hartlep, N. D. (2013). Model minority stereotype: Demystifying Asian American success. Charlotte: Information Age Pub. Read More