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A review by missdaniboo
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
2.0
DNF. It’s not a bad story, I’m just tired of reading about 1990s sweatshops in NYC and immigrants living through the same prejudices and learning curve of becoming American. Beating a dead horse on the head with the same boring storytelling actually does a disservice to the immigrant story because it enables people to become desensitized to it. If an immigrant like me is rolling my eyes reading some of these outrageous scenes, imagine a white person who is just trying to understand the immigrant experience. They either really believe that every immigrant story is awful like that, or like me thinking “cool story bro, but not relatable”
Being an immigrant myself and coming to the USA and New York state at 9.5 yo, I honestly have never had a teacher be so rude to me knowing that English is my second language. I don’t know if it’s actually an experience the author had, but I didn’t need chapters of spelling out “my teacher was rude to me not realizing I don’t understand English” because it’s unbelievable the first time it’s described and even ludicrous in subsequent chapters, especially when she goes to Yale on a scholarship later on
Being an immigrant myself and coming to the USA and New York state at 9.5 yo, I honestly have never had a teacher be so rude to me knowing that English is my second language. I don’t know if it’s actually an experience the author had, but I didn’t need chapters of spelling out “my teacher was rude to me not realizing I don’t understand English” because it’s unbelievable the first time it’s described and even ludicrous in subsequent chapters, especially when she goes to Yale on a scholarship later on