From the Bookshelf of What's the Name of That Book???…
Find A Copy At
Group Discussions About This Book
No group discussions for this book yet.
What Members Thought
I loved this book from the start, but by the time I was 3/4 of the way finished I thought it began to read more like non-fiction, and the ending just left me cold. Kimberly Chang and her mother move from Hong Kong to New York where they live in a squalid apartment and work for slave wages in a factory owned by Kimberly's mother's sister and her husband. The descriptions of their life in poverty are heart-breaking. Their salvation is Kimberly's intelligence and her drive to succeed. We see her go
...more
Read this in less than 24 hours, obsessively, to give you an idea of what kind of a read it is. There's nothing too complex here, but it's very readable and nicely satisfying. Poverty porn meets feelgood coming of age immigrant story. It's not shelved as YA, but would fit right in there.
My only beef is the feasibility of something that happens at the end of the book; it struck me as really unrealistic, and far too neat, which I think ends up giving it a kind of worrying political message about h ...more
My only beef is the feasibility of something that happens at the end of the book; it struck me as really unrealistic, and far too neat, which I think ends up giving it a kind of worrying political message about h ...more
This is the story of a girl from Hong Kong who immigrates to America. I thought it was great, but I did not like the ending.
Great book - could've lived without that last chapter, though. I hate it when authors flash forward. I can't think of a single instance where that worked.
...more
I really loved this. I especially loved the juxtaposition of the fluid internal narration and stilted spoken English, so it was easy to paint a picture of Kimberly's experience. And the 'translations' of Chinese meanings were done in a clever way. A very enjoyable and enlightening read.
...more
Three and a half stars. When will you finally give us half stars, good reads? The story is well written and I flew through it - but for me...the ending fell flat.
One of the best books I've read in a long time.
...more
Mar 14, 2010
katie
marked it as to-read
May 10, 2010
Colleen
marked it as to-read
May 13, 2010
Liz
marked it as to-read
Jun 26, 2010
Sharon
marked it as to-read
Aug 24, 2010
Melissa
marked it as to-read
Dec 25, 2010
Lisa
marked it as to-read
Jan 06, 2011
Erin
marked it as to-read
Jun 16, 2018
Michelle
marked it as to-read
