Coming of Age PDF EPUB MOBI

Mambo in Chinatown

by Jean Kwok

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 2014
Pages: 318

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About this book

Jean Kwok's second novel follows Charlie Wong, a twenty-two year old dishwasher in Chinatown who can't catch a break. She lives with her widowed father and her younger sister, both still mourning Charlie's mother, who was a famous dancer in Beijing before she emigrated.

Then Charlie stumbles into a receptionist job at a ballroom dance studio uptown, and the world she walks into is so far from her old one that the book essentially splits in two.

Kwok was a professional dancer before she became a writer, and the dance scenes feel like they could only have been written by someone who has actually been in those rooms. The family dynamics, especially around the sick younger sister and the use of traditional Chinese medicine, give the book real weight.

Lighter than her debut. Worth reading on its own terms.

About the author

Jean Kwok

Jean Kwok draws on movement between languages, countries, and social worlds to shape her family-centered fiction. Born in Hong Kong, she immigrated to New York City at five, worked in a Chinatown clothing factory during childhood, graduated from Harvard, and earned an MFA from Columbia.