Many Chinese immigrant families send their children away to relatives back home or elsewhere in order to teach them the ways of their ancestors. We also see the generational divide in which the children have adapted more readily, due to schooling and socialising with peers, than their parents who, with limited English and education, are only able to work in low paid jobs. While her first two novels deal with people struggling to make a new life for themselves in a place and culture that is strange to them with barely any ability to speak English, in Searching for Sylvie Lee her characters are already more established, but attempt to find a middle ground of keeping alive the traditions of their native country as well as embracing those of America. Like her previous novels, Girl in Translation (2011) and Mambo in Chinatown (2014), Searching for Sylvie Lee is strongly influenced by Kwok’s own experiences as an immigrant from China arriving in Brooklyn, New York. Inevitably this occurs at a time when people are at their most vulnerable or broken. It explores how, during a crisis, the certainty that one is familiar with every detail of a blood relative’s life can unexpectedly unravel. Jean Kwok’s third novel asks to what extent one ever really knows one’s family.
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