Girl in Translation

When young Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to America, they speak no English and own nothing but debt. They arrive in New York hoeful for a better life, but find instead a squalid Brooklyn apartment and backbreaking labor in a Chinatown sweatshop. Unable to accept this as her future, Kim decides to use her "talent for school" to earn a place for herself and her mother in their adopted country. Disguising the most difficult truths of her meager existence, Kim embarks on a double life: an exceptional student by day, and a sweatshop worker by evening. In time, Kim learns to translate not just her language but herself, back and forth between two worlds, between hardship and triump, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.