***SPOILERS***
I’m finished with Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok throughout the book Kimberly does change. At first she’s this shy girl who was unsure of what to do, but throughout the book she starts “finding” out what she wants to be and what she has to do to get there. She was faced with many hurdles from having that first love-Matt, but having that first love taken away and finding out that you’re pregnant with his son.
An event that changed Kimberly was when she found out she was pregnant with Matt’s baby “I stopped short, my hands flying to my mouth. There were the condoms. I should have known…what a stupid Idea of mine it’d been. Neither of us had even noticed.” (p.252) These few last lines of the chapter stood out since that was the moment Kimberly realized that she was pregnant and in the next chapter she starts thinking to herself how she was supposed to handle this and how this going to change the lives of people around her. She had lots of help like from her mom who instead of what Kimberly thought her mom would react instead helped Kimberly get through everything and made Kimberly feel better to keeping the baby instead of getting it aborted. Her best friend Annette has always been there for here through everything and even when times were hard like this one. Then a boy named Curt in the beginning he was Kimberly’s bully in high school, but after she stood up to him. I guess he saw that she could be a close friend and later on in the book they did become close friends, “You want me to marry you?” (p.268) Curt suggested to Kimberly when she told him about her pregnancy. He didn’t seem to be joking so at that line in the book I saw that all that Curt and Kimberly have been through Curt loved Kimberly enough that he would marry her.
All in all Kimberly’s journey has been hard like in the end of the book she talks about life 12 years later. How she ended up keeping her’s and Matt’s kid and raised him up without Matt there. She also talks about how she succeeded from breaking loose from her aunt and paying all the debt from her off, moving to a new apartment in Queens, going to Yale and becoming a heart doctor. The most important of all is that she’s now able to provide for her family and her family won’t have to worry about going cold or getting kicked out of their apartment.
Kimberly is a good role model since she never gave up on her dreams. She taught me that things that you really want in your life you can achieve. Kimberly also never stopped loving and letting more people into her life, even if that meant letting go one of the most important person who made her and got her where she is today- Matt.
