Girl in Translation (Kwok)
Jul. 4th, 2011 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn3/5. I really wanted to like this book -- it is about the experience of a young Hong Kong immigrant girl, which is a subject that interests me for obvious reasons, and it was touted as an Asian version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which is one of my favorite comfort reads.
And Girl was an entertaining read, and full of all sorts of interesting details about what it's like to be a really poor Asian immigrant in a predominantly white milieu. The kinds of details made it clear that the author had gone through many of these things (confirmed by an interview with the author). And I got to the end, and I felt quite disappointed.
It took me a while to work out why. The biggest obvious potential reason was the romance, which is quite unrealistic and clearly tacked on for Young Adult Interest Woo. Also, I hate saying this (because I think of it as a meta-spoiler) but there is a Surprise Twist Ending. I bring it up here because a) I don't think enough of the book to mind meta-spoiling it, and b) usually I like Surprise Twist Endings, but here I thought it was a flaw, because it hindered development of what could have become some deep and interesting conversations. What was her life like after the Surprise Twist Ending? How did she feel about it? And so on. Oh, and c) this kind of book (fictionalized memoir) really depends on a sort of honesty between the reader and writer, and it's broken by the sudden revelation that, oh yes, there is a Surprise Twist. Although that honesty has already been broken by the dishonest romance (dishonest in the sense that it isn't thought through, it doesn't belong, it just doesn't fit), so maybe I shouldn't give it extra dings for that.
But those are just symptoms. (And honestly, Tree has a pretty weird romance with the Lee character -- who is apparently based on someone Smith knew later in life -- but that was a correspondingly smaller part of the book as well.) The real problem is that there is no character arc and no deeper understanding of the characters -- these things are related, and they're crucial to this kind of book. Kim is spunky and good at school and A Good Person and brave and stuff, I guess, and she's all those things at the end. The aunt is jealous and petty and small-minded, and she's all those things at the end.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has empathy and understanding of all the characters, from the deadbeat dad to the pretty-turned-harsh mother to the promiscuous and totally awesome aunt. (Seriously... this may be the only book I read during my childhood where the woman with the most lovers was also the most awesome woman in the book.) Francie herself, while she doesn't have the sort of arc that can be said to have a definite beginning or end, grows and changes through the book; her experiences do things to her. She, you know, grows up.
So go read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn if you're looking for a kiddie-lit comfort read (think House on the Prairie or Anne of Green Gables, only with dirt-poor Irish ghetto dwellers in the early 1900's, and less shy with respect to sex and death -- it's all PG, but Tree is conscious that sex and death exist, it's not swept under the rug as it is in Wilder or Montgomery), and I'll keep waiting for the Asian equivalent.
And Girl was an entertaining read, and full of all sorts of interesting details about what it's like to be a really poor Asian immigrant in a predominantly white milieu. The kinds of details made it clear that the author had gone through many of these things (confirmed by an interview with the author). And I got to the end, and I felt quite disappointed.
It took me a while to work out why. The biggest obvious potential reason was the romance, which is quite unrealistic and clearly tacked on for Young Adult Interest Woo. Also, I hate saying this (because I think of it as a meta-spoiler) but there is a Surprise Twist Ending. I bring it up here because a) I don't think enough of the book to mind meta-spoiling it, and b) usually I like Surprise Twist Endings, but here I thought it was a flaw, because it hindered development of what could have become some deep and interesting conversations. What was her life like after the Surprise Twist Ending? How did she feel about it? And so on. Oh, and c) this kind of book (fictionalized memoir) really depends on a sort of honesty between the reader and writer, and it's broken by the sudden revelation that, oh yes, there is a Surprise Twist. Although that honesty has already been broken by the dishonest romance (dishonest in the sense that it isn't thought through, it doesn't belong, it just doesn't fit), so maybe I shouldn't give it extra dings for that.
But those are just symptoms. (And honestly, Tree has a pretty weird romance with the Lee character -- who is apparently based on someone Smith knew later in life -- but that was a correspondingly smaller part of the book as well.) The real problem is that there is no character arc and no deeper understanding of the characters -- these things are related, and they're crucial to this kind of book. Kim is spunky and good at school and A Good Person and brave and stuff, I guess, and she's all those things at the end. The aunt is jealous and petty and small-minded, and she's all those things at the end.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has empathy and understanding of all the characters, from the deadbeat dad to the pretty-turned-harsh mother to the promiscuous and totally awesome aunt. (Seriously... this may be the only book I read during my childhood where the woman with the most lovers was also the most awesome woman in the book.) Francie herself, while she doesn't have the sort of arc that can be said to have a definite beginning or end, grows and changes through the book; her experiences do things to her. She, you know, grows up.
So go read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn if you're looking for a kiddie-lit comfort read (think House on the Prairie or Anne of Green Gables, only with dirt-poor Irish ghetto dwellers in the early 1900's, and less shy with respect to sex and death -- it's all PG, but Tree is conscious that sex and death exist, it's not swept under the rug as it is in Wilder or Montgomery), and I'll keep waiting for the Asian equivalent.
