(When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kon...)
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.
(Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wong grew up in New York’s Ch...)
Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wong grew up in New York’s Chinatown, the older daughter of a Beijing ballerina and a noodle maker. Though an ABC (America-born Chinese), Charlie’s entire world has been limited to this small area. Now grown, she lives in the same tiny apartment with her widower father and her eleven-year-old sister and works miserably as a dishwasher. But when she lands a job as a receptionist at a ballroom dance studio, Charlie gains access to a world she hardly knew existed, and everything she once took to be certain turns upside down.
(A poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the compl...)
A poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women - two sisters and their mother - in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears and a series of family secrets emerge. It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother - and then vanishes.
Jean Kwok is a Chinese-American writer. She has written three novels, some short stories, essays, anthologies and books of poetry.
Background
Jean Kwok was born around 1968 in Hong Kong, China. She is the youngest of seven children. Jean Kwok was a dreamy, impractical child who ran wild through the streets of Hong Kong. Kwok’s family immigrated to the United States when she was five. Everyone in the family worked in a clothing factory in New York's Chinatown and they lived in an unheated apartment infested with roaches. Kwok worked in a factory every day after school between the ages of five and eleven.
She started writing when she was seven. Her brother presented her a diary instead of a toy or a Barbie doll, laid this book on her pillow and said, whatever she writes in this diary, that belongs to her.
Education
Jean Kwok attended an elementary school in Queens, then in Brooklyn. Then Kwok studied at Hunter College High School. Upon graduation from high school in 1986, she was granted early admission to Harvard University. Originally she was interested in science but then Jean shifted to English and American Literature. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English with honors. After a few years working, she went to Columbia University and received her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction.
Jean Kwok started by washing dishes in the cafeteria, then cleaned rooms, read to the blind, and worked in the library. She also wanted to give something back to the Chinese community and taught English as a second language to adult immigrants, worked as a Big Sister, and became the director of a summer program for Chinatown kids.
It was at Harvard that she also discovered she loved to dance. After her graduation from Harvard, Kwok needed a day job to help support herself while she was writing. She worked as a professional ballroom dancer for a major studio in New York for three years. She trained, did shows and competitions, and taught students how to waltz, swing, and mambo. For a young immigrant woman who had never fit in, who had never felt graceful, it was a great personal transformation. That was the basis for her second book, Mambo in Chinatown. After winning Top Female Professional at Fred Astaire National Dance Championships, Kwok left ballroom dance to pursue her true dream, writing.
In her last year at Columbia, she worked fulltime for a major investment bank as a member of a five-person computer team that addressed the multimedia needs of the Board of Directors. She has also spoken at many schools and venues including Harvard University, Columbia University and the Tucson Festival of Books.
After receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree she moved to the Netherlands for love and worked for Leiden University and the Delft University of Technology, teaching English and as a Dutch-English translator until she finished Girl in Translation. The inspiration behind the novel was the family's difficult life when moved to the United States. After its publication, she quit quitting a full-time writer.
Jean Kwok's novel Girl in Translation has been published in eighteen countries, translated into sixteen languages and taught in universities, colleges and high schools across the world. Kwok's novel Mambo in Chinatown was published in 8 countries and translated into 7 languages. It was one of the New and Noteworthy Books listed by USA Today in June 2014 and was selected for Penguin Stacks and Best Books of 2014 by Real Simple and Woman's Day. Kwok's third novel Searching for Sylvie Lee has been named the most anticipated book of 2019. It has also been selected as the best book by Marie Claire, Publishers Weekly, and Good Housekeeping.
Kwok has been selected for many honors including the American Library Association Alex Award, the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award and the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award international shortlist. She received Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Scholarship, Columbia University Graduate Writing Division Fellowships, Harvard Club of New York Scholarship, John Harvard Scholarship for Academic Achievement of the Highest Distinction, and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Scholarship for Academic Achievement of the Highest Distinction.
Her books have been welcomed throughout Asia, including mainland China. A television documentary was filmed about Jean and her work.
(Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wong grew up in New York’s Ch...)
2014
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Jean Kwok has been influenced by many writers: Amy Tan, Lan Samantha Chang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-Rae Lee, Ethan Canin, and Andrea Barrett. There are some authors that open up her own writing: Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Italo Calvino, Anita Brookner, and Donna Tartt.
The goal of Girl in Translation was to explain that children really do live - and work - as she did in her first years in this country.
Quotations:
"I think that I would like to write a memoir at some point. I've had an interesting life and I'd like to lay it out as it was, especially for my children. However, I won't be doing this until I'm very old, I think."
"I really love Holland, but there are a lot of things I miss about New York. Most of all, I miss my New York friends and family. I miss the feeling of complete freedom you have on the street, where you could dance along in a huge yellow chicken outfit and no one would really notice you. I miss the musicians that perform in the subways and on the street. I miss the cab drivers who all have their own stories. And of course, I miss the bagels."
"People give up their language, their family, their culture, their diplomas. They give up everything to come here so their kids can have a better life and a better chance. It's a cliché, but it also is true."
"All my mother ever wanted in life was a tall, fat daughter who was a lawyer, so I failed miserably. She would try to fatten me up her entire life."
"I don't need my work to be fun. I need it to be satisfying. It's from the satisfaction that I can truly be happy. Satisfaction comes from doing what I was meant to do, figuring out why I was put on this Earth and working as hard as I can to do it. It might not be fun for the moment, but it's fun for your life. That sense of deep satisfaction is what's going to lead you to true happiness."
Membership
Jean Kwok is a member of the Curatorial Board of Ragdale Foundation.
Personality
Jean Kwok is a terrible housewife: she is terrible at cleaning, she hates to clean and to cook. She burns everything. To this day, she can't make dumplings. She is clumsy.
Kwok is trilingual, speaking Dutch, Chinese, and English fluently. She had also studied Latin for 7 years.
Physical Characteristics:
Jean Kwok's brothers insisted on cutting her hair, so she had weird hair, bad hair. Her hair now goes down to her waist. That is a direct result of that childhood trauma.
Interests
cats
Connections
Jean Kwok is married to Erwin Ryan. They have two sons.
Brother:
Kwan Kwok
Kwan Kwok passed away in a plane crash on November 23, 2009.
