Girl In Translation

"…most of the windowpanes were missing or cracked, with filthy shards of glass protruding from the wooden frame. A thick layer of dust covered the small kitchen table and wide sink…As I walked, I tried to avoid the brittle bodies of dead roaches scattered here and there."

The apartment Aunt Paula chooses for her sister and niece could barely be less livable. She claims that it's only temporary, and that she will let them  know when a better option becomes available. This never happens, and Kim and Ma are forced to live for years in a filthy apartment, as the only tenants  in their building.

"'It is not easy to understand Chinese. Certain things are not said directly.'"

Kim says this regarding one of Aunt Paula's acts of passive-aggression towards her and Ma. Having a bilingual consciousness, Kim understands that there are many differences in the sense and syntax of each language. She must constantly switch between Chinese and English, not only in her speech, but in her way of thinking. The author's literal transcriptions of Chinese idioms provide a way of better understanding some of the subtleties embedded in exchanges between characters who speak in Chinese.

"I've gone to great lengths and gotten you a job at the clothing factory. I even fired the old worker to make space for you. You see? Your older sister will take care of you."

Aunt Paula continuously insists that she has Kim and Ma's best interests at heart, despite that her actions communicate otherwise. It's true that she gets Ma a job at the factory, but in that job, she must perform physical labor for well over eight-hour days, six days a week. She gets paid less than two  dollars an hour, and her daughter must work alongside her. Paula provides them with housing, though their apartment's conditions are nearly unlivable.   Whenever they ask her about moving, she reassures them that their situation is temporary. The Changs live in constant fear that Aunt Paula will revoke their living and working situations.

"They enter at this table as children and they leave from it as grandmas," Aunt Paula said with a wink. "The circle of factory life."

Though this sounds like something said during the Industrial Revolution, for the Chinese immigrants in this novel, it is often a reality. Without the language skills or citizenship status necessary to find better-paying work, many immigrants become trapped in dead-end factory jobs, working for unlivable wages. As Ma explains, the factories are often run by friends or family, who won't report the illegal status of their employees. Fearing that they have no other choice, Ma and others like hercontinue to work in hellish conditions. Ma, however, has hopes that Kim will be able to escape this cycle.

"Most people never leave this life. It's probably too late for me. My days of being a refined music teacher are over…That's all right. That's what a parent is for, to do whatever is necessary to give her child a good life"

Ma sacrifices her time and energy in order to provide the best life that she can for Kim. This is one of the few times in the book in which Ma expresses her feelings about their situation. Mostly, she keeps quiet, for fear of upsetting Aunt Paula and jeopardizing their income and housing. However, here, regret and sadness tinge her speech, as she allows Kim to see the cost she's paying to afford her a better opportunity.

"Excuse me, sir." I tried to enunciate clearly. "May I borrow a rubber?"

This is one of the first times Kim speaks English in front of a large group of   people, in this case, her teacher and classmates. She is trying to ask for an eraser, but uses a word that carries an entirely different meaning. The class laughs at her and she feels embarrassed.

"For years, I calculated whether or not something was expensive by how many skirts it cost. In those days, the subway was 100 skirts just to get to the factory and back, a package of gum cost 7 skirts…I even measured friendship in skirts."

"Ah-Kim, if you go too many times to her house, we will have to invite her back to ours one day and then what? Little heart's stem, we already have too many debts we can't repay."

Throughout her schooldays, Kim makes excuses to Annette as to why she   can't come to their house. She is embarrassed and afraid for anyone to see the conditions in which they live, so she goes to lengths to hide them. This leaves Kim out of the American cultural practice of having playdates at friends' houses, and also causes tension between Annette and Kim. Without the context of the Changs' true level of poverty, Annette feels that Kim is lying to her for no real reason.

"These kids and their game were completely alien to me. At my current elementary school, at least I wasn't the only nonwhite child and I certainly wasn't the only poor one."

When she visits Harrison Prep for the first time, Kim experiences major culture shock. Though her public elementary school was in a 'better' neighborhood than her own, its students still represented the diversity of Brooklyn's population. Having never been in a space in which wealthy, white people make up the majority, Kim experiences some doubt as to whether she should try to get into Harrison.

"For just a moment, Aunt Paula had flipped her polite face over and we had seen the black face underneath. We would be allowed to work and not cause any trouble for her, but she didn't want us to be any more successful than she was."

Aunt Paula engages in many kinds of behaviors designed to keep Kim and Ma in their respective places. She tries to remain composed and disguise her competitiveness with Ma with false kindness, but in moments of duress, she allows her true colors to be seen. As Kim ages, she gains the courage to stand up to Aunt Paula, and, eventually, so does Ma.

"Each fan was tall and black like a sarcophagus, swathed in dust. Thick strands of filth hung off each part of the wire hood, swaying in the wind until they broke off to splatter against my face."

Dust infiltrates Kim's home and work spaces without cessation. At work, the fabrication and packing of clothes create dust from the fabric particulate. It gets into hair, skin, and clothes, serving as a constant, residual reminder of   the labor she performs each day.

"'I play for myself too,' she'd answered. 'Without my violin, I'd forget who I was.'"

Ma's violin-playing represents her last hold on the happy life she chose for herself in Hong Kong, where she was a music teacher. Her talent and passion for music contrast Aunt Paula and Kim's ambitions that orient them towards material successes in life. Playing the violin is also one of the few luxuries that Ma affords herself as she toils day after day in the factory.

"A tall boy with a lion's mane of sandy hair was playing around, arm wrestling with the ginger-haired one, and when the tawny boy's blazer fell open, I saw that the t-shirt he had on underneath was splattered with paint."

As with Matt, Kim's recalls her first encounter with Curt in terms of his physicality and clothing. This initial regard foreshadows Kim's later infatuation with Curt's physique, and her struggle to understand his artistic sensibilities and preference for abstraction.

"As usual, Ma and I ate rice she'd brought from home. For Chinese people, rice is the actual food and everything else—meat, vegetables—was just an accessory to it. We had so little money during these days, though, that Ma put hardly any meat in with the rice anymore."

This scene demonstrates Ma and Kim's preservation of Chinese culture through their diet, and rice's importance as a Chinese staple. It also portrays their utter destitution, as these two women, who work physically six days a week, survive on little more than rice.

"…Ma had always been bad at languages. And the two languages were so different, it was as if I were asking her to change her eye color."

In the U.S., Kim has advantages over Ma in their English-learning. She had studied it in school in Hong Kong, she is immersed in it at school, and she  spends half of her time with English-speakers. Ma, on the other hand, spends all of her time with Chinese-speakers, in the factory and in Chinatown. Kim's assistance with English-language interactions also enables Ma to continue speaking only Chinese. Because of this, though, Ma fails her two naturalization tests, forcing Kim to take one of her own as soon as she turns eighteen. 

"'Ah-Kim, I know you mean well. It's just that everything in you gets spoken right out.'She meant I was too honest, and at that moment, I agreed with her."

Ma says this to Kim in reference to one of her defensive outbursts directed at Aunt Paula. As Kim matures, she tends to express herself verbally, without filter. This contrasts what seems to be the Chinese ideal for children's interaction with adults, which seems to be relatively passive obedience. She also uses this blunt verbal expression with Americans in her life, like Curt and Annette.

"After the dusty, physical work of the factory, the scientific world created a clear and logical paradise where I could feel safe…mathematics was the only language I truly understood. It was pure, orderly and predictable."

For Kim, math and science provide a refuge in her otherwise demanding and confusing life. She feels confident and certain in these subjects, reveling in their concrete order. In the form of medical school, these things also provide her with a way out of her living situation.

"'This is not some abstract idea in your head. This is my life.'"

Kim's friend Annette never quite seems to grasp the desperation of the  Changs' situation. When Kim finally tells Annette that she works with Ma in the factory, Annette asks her if she's serious, and whether it's illegal for someone so young to work there. Frustrated, Kim says the above to her friend. This seems to give Annette some perspective about the reality of Kim's life and Annette agrees not to say anything to anyone.

"All I wanted was to have a break from the exhausting cycle of my life, to flee from the constant anxiety that haunted me: fear of my teachers, fear at every assignment, fear of Aunt Paula, fear that we'd never escape."

In the middle of her high school years, Kim faces indescribable pressure as she fights her way out of a future of poverty. She has no advocate other than herself, and often finds her future completely out of her control. She  begins to long for an escape from her constant cycle of schoolwork, factory work, caring for herself and Ma, and exhaustion. One of the small ways she   finds to escape is by browsing the discarded car and motorcycle magazines Mr. Jamali gives her and fantasizing about driving through the city in a Corvette.

"I felt as if I were a scarecrow in a high wind. At any moment, I could be blown out of balance, all of the pieces that composed me would scatter and I would wake to find nothing left of myself, nothing left of the person I wanted to be."

The faculty and administration doubt Kim's abilities in math and science after she receives high scores on a national test. They decide to give her an  oral exam in front of all of the math and science faculty to test her abilities, something required of none of her peers. This shakes Kim's confidence and she begins to doubt whether she can continue on towards her goals. However, she aces the exam and proves them all wrong.

"He had shown me his shameful secret, and I had accepted it. It seemed a kind of turning point for us, a promise of trust and openness, and maybe even love."

Matt opens up to Kim by way of taking her with him to visit his dad in his gambling den. Until then, Kim feels an attraction to Matt, but not quite love. After this incident, she begins to see that it could be love, and wonders if she should pursue the relationship. However, Matt quickly gets a girlfriend and crushes Kim's hopes.

"I realized that he was intelligent; it was only that he didn't care for school. He was my complete opposite."

Curt and Kim become an unlikely pseudo-couple for a portion of high school. He is the privileged son of wealthy parents who has time to invest in his artistic practice, while Kim's life circumstances don't afford her time with which to explore anything other than academics. Her focus on gaining monetary success prevents her from being able to understand how Curt can see beauty in abstract sculptures, while Curt can't understand how his  affinity for discarded objects comes across as fetishization of poverty to Kim.

"Happy? How much rice can you earn with happiness?"

Aunt Paula expresses this to Ma in a rare display of her true feelings. Even though Kim hates her aunt for many reasons, her ideas about success aren't so far off from Aunt Paula's. In the end, she doesn't follow in Ma's footsteps by choosing a life with the man she loves; she chooses a life alone, in order to create her own financial security for herself, her son, and Ma.