SCHOOL
* Being accused of cheating is shocking both culturally (that would shame my family) and academically (I’m too smart to have to cheat)
* For First generation, education is the way out
- Good test scores
- Regurgitate back information
- Go to a good college
* New languages can sometimes be read better than spoken
* Her language was Cantonese (not Mandarin) – the early 1900s (1909 Qing Dynasty decree), China has promoted Mandarin for use in education, the media and official communication the use of Cantonese in many overseas Chinese communities. It has more native speakers (nearly a billion) than does any other language. Cantonese is the predominantly spoken language in everyday life.
* Math may be taught/learned in different ways (ie: regrouping)
* It’s interesting to note that Japanese students clean their classroom and change their shoes. Schools can be very different in other countries.
RACE & IDENTITY
* We talked a little about Racial identity – If you come from another country, you have a developed sense of identity. When you grow up in the United States, you have felt the oppression growing up and that has shaped the experience of yourself.
* The main character felt that there were different rules for whites and Chinese
RELIGION & CULTURAL TRADITIONS
* Quan Yin is an important goddess
* Buddhist religion
* Chinese New Year traditions include not breaking anything
* Honor and integrity are important values – they had to pay their debt to Aunt Paula
* “Debts we can't repay” is an important theme
- Don’t want to “owe” anyone anything
- Don’t want to feel indebted, so presents need to be big
- Don’t talk about your personal business
FACTORY WORK & EMPLOYMENT
History of sweatshops
1995 (illegal) sweatshop raid
* Paying by piece in a clothing factory is illegal, so is kids helping parents
* Mom didn’t use her musical talent and connections to Chinatown to teach music or make extra money.
* One person in our group talked about living where she worked and helping out in the family business (owning a motel).
Some details from this website:
Forced labor of various sorts, such as debt bondage (similar to indentured servitude), captive migrant labor, prison labor, and child labor plagues developed and developing countries alike. International attention focused on child labor in recent years after Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani carpet slave, was murdered at age 12, allegedly ordered by company owners after Masih spoke out on child slavery. Masih had been sold into slavery by his parents for $16 at age 4. He was chained to a loom to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week until age 10, when he escaped and began to protest child labor. Many other incidences of forced labor and child labor have been brought to light recently, including:
* In El Monte, California in 1995, 72 undocumented Thai workers producing clothing for stores such as Sears, Macy’s, and Filene’s were found locked behind barbed wire fences. They were forced to work 17 hours a day, earning 70 cents an hour and sleeping as many as 8 to a bedroom.
* Workers at a Chinese shoe factory are captives of the company’s 100 security guards, and are not paid wages.
* Children in a Tangerang, Indonesia factory were found to be working for $4 per week (well below the Indonesian minimum wage), working 7-13 hour days in 1991.
* Seventeen percent of soccer balls produced in Pakistan were found to be made by children.
* In the Phillipines, a three and a half year old was found making Rubberworld thongs.
In China, forced and unpaid prison labor is common. The International Labor Organization estimates 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working worldwide, about 12.5 million of whom work in export industries. The unofficial estimate of child labor in Indonesia is 3.3 million children of a total population of under-16 year olds of 69 million. In Thailand, the unofficial estimate of 4 million in child labor represents 20% of Thailand’s under-16 population. The United States imports an estimated $100 million per year in goods produced by children in slavery or bonded labor, according to the New York Times.
Click here for non sweatshop apparel
FRIENDSHIPS (also related to “debt”)
* Kids were saying, “Why can’t you do this, why can’t you do that,” and the main character had to work.
* She couldn’t go on a playdate because she could never invite kids over for play dates to “return the favor”
- Matt was really nice.
- Annette was the girlfriend.
- Curt was the kids from the school.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The youngest of seven children and a girl at that, I was a dreamy, impractical child who ran wild through the sunlit streets of Hong Kong. No one was more astonished than my family when I turned out to be quite good at school. We moved to New York City when I was five and my only gift was taken from me. I did not understand a word of English.
We lost all our money in the move to the United States. My family started working in a sweatshop in Chinatown. My father took me there every day after school and we all emerged many hours later, soaked in sweat and covered in fabric dust. Our apartment swarmed with insects and rats. In the winter, we kept the oven door open day and night because there was no other heat in the apartment.
By then, my family had stopped working at the sweatshop and we'd moved to a run-down brownstone in Brooklyn Heights that had been divided into formerly rent-controlled apartments. It was a vast improvement, but there was still no money to spare. If I didn't get into a top school with a full financial aid package, I wouldn't be able to go to college. Although I loved English, I didn't think it was a practical choice and devoted myself to science instead. In my last year in high school, I worked in three laboratories: the Genetic Engineering and Molecular Biology labs at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Center and the Biophysics/Interface Lab at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Brooklyn.
I then moved to Holland for love and went through the process of adjusting to another culture and learning another language again. I taught English at Leiden University in the Netherlands and worked as a Dutch-English translator until I finished Girl in Translation. After it was accepted for publication, I quit to write fulltime. I live in the Netherlands with my husband and two sons, and the publication of this novel has been a dream come true.
