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Mambo in Chinatown - Jean Kwok
Mambo in Chinatown
by: (author)
4.30 50
From the bestselling author of Girl in Translation, a novel about a young woman torn between her family duties in Chinatown and her escape into the world of ballroom dancing. Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wong grew up in New York’s Chinatown, the older daughter of a Beijing ballerina and a... show more
From the bestselling author of Girl in Translation, a novel about a young woman torn between her family duties in Chinatown and her escape into the world of ballroom dancing. 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. Gradually, at the dance studio, awkward Charlie’s natural talents begin to emerge. With them, her perspective, expectations, and sense of self are transformed—something she must take great pains to hide from her father and his suspicion of all things Western. As Charlie blossoms, though, her sister becomes chronically ill. As Pa insists on treating his ailing child exclusively with Eastern practices to no avail, Charlie is forced to try to reconcile her two selves and her two worlds—Eastern and Western, old world and new—to rescue her little sister without sacrificing her newfound confidence and identity.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN: 9781594632006 (1594632006)
Pages no: 384
Edition language: English
Category:
Contemporary
Bookstores:
Community Reviews
It's a Mad Mad World
It's a Mad Mad World rated it
5.0 Mambo in Chinatown by Jean Kwok (SWE/ENG)
SWEDISH REVIEW Ny roman från prisbelönta Jean Kwok som gav oss succén Nästan hemma! En inspirerande askungesaga om flickan som finner ett nytt liv med dansens hjälp! Tjugotvååriga Charlie Wong växte upp i New Yorks Chinatown som den äldsta dottern till en ballerina från Peking och en nudelmakare....
AdventurousBooks
AdventurousBooks rated it
5.0 Mambo in Chinatown
Review to follow
TrevorPTweedleD
TrevorPTweedleD rated it
3.0 Mambo in Chinatown
"While everyone else was teaching, I went to an unoccupied corner and started going over material I had learned that day. For the first time, I felt as if I might have a chance to actually be good at something. Like Godmother said, nothingness was the beginning of the universe."Charlie Wong is a twe...
Reflections
Reflections rated it
4.5 An engaging ugly duckling to swan story with a dual Chinatown and dance studio setting
It’s been many years since I was twenty-two, and I’m not ABC (American-born Chinese), and I’ve never had to choke down a traditional medicine brewed from the intimate body parts of strange animals to please a parent, but Charlie Wong is the kind of character it’s easy to relate to. Clumsy, imperfect...
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