Mambo in Chinatown

At 22, Charlie Wong knows little of life outside of Chinatown. The daughter of a Beijing ballerina - who never danced again after moving to America - and a noodle maker - who has raised Charlie and her younger sister, Lisa, alone following the death of his wife when Charlie was 14 - Charlie was never a stellar student and now finds herself at a bit of a deadend, working as a dishwasher in the same noodle restaurant where her father makes the noodles.

This insular world is upended when she accepts a job as the receptionist at a ballroom dance studio and slowly discovers the world beyond Chinatown, a world whose existence was largely a mystery to her. Gradually, Charlie's world separates into two parts - the life in Chinatown with her sister and father, from whom she must hide all aspects of her new life, and the new, Western life which she increasingly embraces. As her sister becomes sicker and sicker, though, and her uncle's Eastern medicine cannot restore her health, Charlie must find a way to bring together these two selves - the two ways of living and being - to help heal her sister. 

This is the first book by Jean Kwok that I've read, and I loved her voice. The settings - Chinatown and a professional dance studio - are both so particular, with such nuance, that it's clear Kwok knows of what she writes. Likewise, the infusion of eastern philosophy interspersed in otherwise very snappy (i.e., young and modern) prose, provides a unique voice - and offers sustenance such that Mambo in Chinatown moves out of the mind candy realm and feels a bit more like literature. Such food for thought, if you will, takes the form of lines like "The hardest part of making a sacrifice isn't the moment when you do it. That's the easiest. You're too busy being proud of yourself for being so noble. What's hard is the day after that and the following one and all of those days to come. It's needing to make that sacrifice over and over again, the rest of your life, while in your mind, you can still taste that which you lost. or what you think you lost." Indeed.

Four stars.