Tag: immigration

Girl in Translation

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Author: Jean Kwok
Genres: Fiction, Young Adult
Read: Jan. 2018

YES! Finally, a good read in 2018! I was off to a rough start before this gem!

Girl in Translation has been on my TBR forever and I finally decided to give it a read as part of my January Reading Challenge to read 3 books about immigration. This is a beautiful, beautiful book and I’m so glad I finally took the time to read it.

Girl in Translation tells the semi-autobiographical story of Kimberly Chang and her mother as they try to survive in New York City as new immigrants from Hong Kong. I’m not entirely sure when this book is set, but from a few of the pop culture references it seems to take place in the 1980’s. Kim and her Ma are sponsored into America by her Aunt Paula, who puts them up in an apartment in Brooklyn and gives Ma a job at her husband’s clothing factory. Kim and Ma are dismayed at the state of the apartment, which has broken windows, no heat, and a lot of roaches and rats.

Back in Hong Kong, Kimberly was always top of her class, and knowing hardly any english, she struggles at school. Ma is working as a finisher at the clothing factory along with many other Chinese-Americans. The factory is actually a sweat shop that illegally pays its workers by the garment (as opposed to an hourly wage) and Kim must help Ma every day after school until late in the night to get the clothes ready for each shipment. When Kimberly is teased at school and harassed by her teacher, she wants to skip school, but quickly realizes that she is her and Ma’s only chance at ever getting out of poverty. She’s throws herself wholeheartedly into learning English and works hard to get back to the top of the class again.

This is such a heartbreaking and inspiring story and I really like Kwok’s writing. It reminded me of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which is a huge compliment because it is one of my all time favourite books. It’s not a plot driven book, it’s simply the story of a young girl growing up in very tough circumstances and working incredibly hard to better herself and her family. I loved that Kimberly was tenacious and ambitious, but that she was also very real and had flaws. She takes the weight of the world upon her shoulders and she refuses to ever ask for help. She struggles to make friends, but she is so lucky to have Annette and I wish she’d confided in her and shared herself with Annette. Kim always declined help and was reluctant to let anyone into her life. I feel like may be a symptom of her Chinese culture as Ma was always reluctant to build any relationship that couldn’t be reciprocated and reverently believed in the idea that a debt must always be repaid. Sadly they both seemed to confuse kindness as a debt sometimes.

The ending is pretty abrupt, which caught me off guard. I actually think this story could have used another 50 pages to do the ending justice, but I still really liked it. It’s a heartbreaking ending, but I really appreciated it because it was real. When I saw where things were going at the end, I immediately knew how Kim was going to react because Kwok has breathed such life into this character that she took on a life of her own and acting any other way would have been contrary to her character. Kwok is very perceptive and I loved all of her characters because they were so real and so flawed. I was worried she might take the easy way out to create a happier ending, but I’m glad she stayed true to her characters and gave us this very bittersweet ending.

January Reading Challenge

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Happy New Year everyone! I had a great year of reading in 2017 and I’m looking forward to starting my monthly challenges and reading lots more great books in 2018.

At first I thought this exercise might help me reduce my TBR, but after picking my first monthly challenge I quickly realized it’s actually going to result in the discovery of a lot more books to add to my TBR. Oh well, you can never have too many books right?

I am super excited to announce my first monthly challenge for January! After doing a quick brainstorm I think I have enough challenge ideas to last me for the next 3 years, and I’m really happy with my choice for next month. I’ve decided my first challenge will be:

Read 3 books about immigration

I don’t want to pigeonhole myself on the first challenge, so I’m leaving it very broad. But oh my goodness, picking just 3 books was so hard!! I tried to find books representing a good variety of experiences, the three I settled on are:

  1. Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
  2. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
  3. American Street by Ibi Zoboi

Girl in Translation showed up on almost every list of books I looked at about immigration stories (along with Breath, Eyes, Memory, which I’ll have to make time for in the future as well). It’s about a Chinese-American girl and “the countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires”. It was published in 2010 and has been on my TBR for ages, so at least I’m making a little progress!

Pachinko was nominated for the National Book Award in the fiction category this year and lost to Sing, Unburied, Sing (which I read earlier this year and was quite good!). I’m really excited for this one because so many immigration stories are about immigration to America, but Pachinko is a historical novel about a Korean family who is forced to move to Japan in the early 1900’s in search of jobs. Added bonus because I’ve been wanting to read this one as well.

American Street is a new book that I added to the list at the last minute. When I realized Pachinko had been nominated for the National Book Award, I took a look at the other nominees and saw American Street had been nominated for the young adult category ( side note: Far From the Tree won this one, which I LOVED). American Street tells the story of a young Haitian girl whose mother is detained by US immigration when they try to enter America and her challenges adapting to life in Detroit. I’m happy to include this one as it’s a YA contemporary novel.

I think it’s a pretty good mix of books – I’m a little disappointed I don’t have any African immigration stories, but I read both Americanah and Behold the Dreamers last year, so I’ll keep those in mind as I read these. I also wanted to include a Canadian immigration story, but I just finished listening to One Day We’ll All be Dead and None of This Will Matter, which is a series of essays written by Buzzfeed’s Scaachi Koul about what it’s like growing up in Canada with immigrant Indian parents. I really liked this one and would definitely recommend!

So evidently this isn’t my first foray into books about immigration, but I’m looking forward to reading these 3 acclaimed novels. Wish me luck and feel free to join in by reading any of these books. I’ll check back in with reviews in a month!

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

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AKA: One Day This Will Matter
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Scaachi Koul
Genres: Non-fiction, Essays, Memoir
Read: Dec. 2017 on audiobook

 

I listened to this as an audiobook and I loved it! It is narrated by the author and I really enjoyed both her writing and narration.

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter is a series of essays written by Scaachi Koul, daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up in Calgary. She later moved to Toronto for university and I believe she currently works for Buzzfeed.

I didn’t really know what this was about before I picked it up. I selected it very quickly when I was looking for something to listen to on a run because I had seen some buzz about it and I like non-fiction audiobooks that are narrated by the author. I was thrilled to discover it was written by a Canadian and about her experiences growing up in Canada and the challenges of being the daughter of immigrants.

Scaachi is really funny and she is also very insightful. I can’t believe she is the same age as me, which made this book all the more impressive. Canadians like to be critical of America (especially in the Trump era) and we like to think we’re better and more progressive, but there is definitely still what Scaachi calls “casual racism” happening here. I wouldn’t say this book was necessarily “eye-opening” for me, but it was definitely a perspective I don’t hear very often and I really appreciated Scaachi’s observations.

She talks about what it’s like to grow up female and Indian. How she is envied for her lush, thick indian hair, but at the same time shamed for having hair everywhere else on her body. What it’s like to travel back to India and discover that while you don’t quite fit in Canada, you don’t fit here either and the life your parents so fondly remember doesn’t really exist anymore. How challenging it is to have to hide all your romantic relationships growing up and what it’s like bringing a white boy 10 years your senior home to your parents.

Her parents have had a large influence on her life and it was interesting to learn more about Indian culture – the stereotypes, inequities, and familial importance. I like to think I’ve learned a little bit about Indian culture since moving to Vancouver, but I was really interested in Scaachi’s thoughts on Indian weddings, arranged marriages, and the rites and passages of her culture. She has a contentious relationship with her father that I couldn’t relate to – I found her father very unyielding and sometimes even childish in his reactions – but she still made me like him and helped me to understand a little bit more about Indian families.

I think stories like Scaachi’s are important because they provide perspective and enable you to walk in someone else’s shoes to an extent. It helps when they’re really well written, which this was. Scaachi had a perfect blend of just enough humour to make it fun, but enough perspective to also make her stories meaningful.

It’s a quick read, even as an audiobook, and I would definitely recommend!

The Refugees

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Viet Thanh Nyugen
Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Historical Fiction
Read: April 2017

 

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this collection of short stories. It didn’t deliver what I was expecting and at times I found it slow moving and pretty boring. However, it did offer a different perspective on the experiences of refugees, that while different from my expectations, was still valuable.

The Refugees featured in Nguyen’s stories were all from Vietnam and had all eventually settled in America. I expected this collection to focus on refugees who were attempting to flee their homeland or trying to build new lives in America. However, most of the stories took place years after the refugees had settled in America and in some ways didn’t even feel like stories about refugees.

I thought that Nguyen’s stories about a wife whose husband is suffering Alzheimer’s, a man who meets his liver donor, and a father who travels to Vietnam to visit his daughter studying abroad weren’t stories that were unique to refugees – they easily could have happened to anyone. During a time when many Americans (and Canadians) are afraid of refugees, I thought Nguyen’s stories were an important reminder that refugees are normal people who build lives, put down roots, and contribute to society in the same way as everyone else. Unfortunately, they are just people who have been forced to flee their home country, often due to horrifying circumstances.

While I didn’t love all the stories, there were some that I enjoyed. I sympathized with Mrs. Khanh, whose husband was slowly forgetting their past together and her horror when he begins to call her by an unknown woman’s name. I felt Phuong’s frustration when her privileged half-sister returned to Vietnam and won her father’s affection but refused to help her create a better life. And I understood the mother who was conflicted at giving her hard earned money to what she believed to be a lost cause, but couldn’t say no to another mother mourning her husband and son.

Overall this was still a decent read, but I would recommend The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui over this one, which I loved! It’s also a refugee story about a family fleeing Vietnam for America, but I felt much more connected to the characters.