Holds are growing for Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation.

Kwok, who immigrated as a child from China in the 1980’s, turns her own experience into fiction in this debut. USA Today comments on the book’s narrative style,

Writing in first-person from Kim’s point of view, Kwok cleverly employs phonetic spellings to illustrate her protagonist’s growing understanding of English and wide-eyed view of American teen culture.

People (5/17) gives it a 3.5 of a possible 4 stars and Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+, calling it “consistently compelling.”

In the following video, Kwok talks about the shock of coming from a middle-class life in China to the U.S. where she worked in a sweat shop and lived in an unheated apartment.

The author will appear at the ALTAFF First Author, First Book program at ALA in June.

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Girl in Translation Jean Kwok Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-04-29) ISBN / EAN: 1594487561 / 9781594487569

Penguin Audio; UNABR; 9780142427996; $25.95
Books on Tape; UNABR; 9780307736185; $39.95
OverDrive WMA Audiobook

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 11:34 am and is filed under Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.