July 2011 Book Club Meeting

Summary: When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she 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 also herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles. -- Riverhead

For July, my book club decided to read GIRL IN TRANSLATION by Jean Kwok. I loved this book when I read it last year (you can read my review here) and I was excited to see if all of my friends would agree. Most everyone enjoyed the book although I'm not sure anyone loved it quite like I did. A few of the women weren't disappointed with the ending.

I was worried that since most of us liked (if not loved) the book that there might not be a lot to discuss; however, I shouldn't have worried -- we all had a lot to say. We ended up addressing most of the questions in the reading guide, and I'm happy to say that many of them were addressed before we even went through the list.

As was the case when I first read this novel, all of us were deeply affected by Kimberly's story. I think it's safe to say that we all looked at how fortunate we are just to be born in the United States, and how we tend to take things for granted. Our discussion even went down the path of what we can do to make sure that our kids are aware of people with less and whether we should insulate them from sadness and discomfort. All in all, I'd say it was an excellent book to discuss.

Next month we decided to forgo reading a book and instead do something a little different. Rather than having our regular book club meeting, we will be going out for a movie and a quick dinner. Since we read THE HELP a few years ago, we thought it might be fun to see the movie and then compare and contrast with the book. Plus we have so many members vacationing over the next few weeks, we weren't sure how many of us would even be available to meet next month.