Memior of Suki Kim

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Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits In the book, “The Interpreter”, Suki Kim writes about her struggle which is published in the New York Times “Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits”. The main point of her writing was how she faced difficulty adjusting to the change she went through when coming to American, after growing up in Korea as a wealthy girl. In Korea she was raised with maids, chauffeurs, and governesses all while living in a Mansion on the hilltops. Her father was wealthy millionaire from businesses he owned such as a shipping company, mining business, and hotels. When he lost it all through bankruptcy they had to come to American because in Korea bankruptcy was punishable by law to which he could serve jail time if he stayed. This is how Suki and her family lost it all and lived in poverty when she came to America. She talks about how she struggled having to live in the new conditions at the home in Harlem, having to deal with living in a “crammed, ugly place”, and how she found it “humiliating” to have to take their dirty clothes to the Laundromat (McGraw Hill p. 62). This was all a lot to take in going from one extreme to another but another point she made that she struggled with was the language barrier she faced with others that spoke English. Her first playmates were the kids of the people who owned the house she lived in, Billy and Andy, although she hardly considered playmates since they couldn’t understand each other, they were the first kids she interacted with. While going to school is where she discovered her first English word “Fresh off the boat” which is also known as F.O.B, her lack of understanding the meaning behind the word confused her as to why they would use that term since she flew to American and didn’t come off a boat. Had she understand that the term originated from earlier years when most immigrants came to
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