ECHOES AND ENTRANCES

Zhang, a Chinese American writer and the founder of a nonprofit that assists English-language learners, explores “what it means to live in translation” in this multi-genre work.

Drawing from her own experience and that of other ELLs, the author considers how ideas of language and self interact with concepts of home, school, and society at large. The book’s first part focuses on living, speaking, and dreaming across languages through poetry, fiction, and stage plays. Poems such as “Field Guide to Survival in English” and “Glossary for the Newly Displaced” capture the tension of straddling cultures. “A Fictional Portrait of Immigrant Fluency” is an endearing snapshot of a man who’s diligently learning what terms like “run an errand” mean with his daughter’s help. Shame about using imperfect English is a recurring theme: The speaker of “The Language Between Us” describes rewriting her mother’s notes to teachers and editing her mother’s texts before forwarding them on. A series of “Search History” poems reveal what multiple family members are Googling, such as “how to understand my daughter’s jokes,” and “can school punish if parent makes mistake in form.” The book’s second half widens the scope, analyzing legal and systemic factors affecting ELL students through essays and interviews, but it’s dry and academic compared to the rest of the book and lacks emotional impact. The epilogue includes a letter in which Zhang tells her younger self, “Just don’t give up.” At its best, Zhang’s lyrical language often cuts to the core of the immigrant and ELL experiences in lines such as “In our apartment, the walls were made of air and disappointment. / You could hear other families loving each other louder. Our / family loved in lowercase, in leftovers.” Her experimentation with form is also bold and effective in pieces such as “What We Google Instead of Ask,” framed as a group chat interspersed with search-engine queries. Her compassion for ELLs is also evident throughout: “Child,/ are you listening?/ The most beautiful part/ of your voice/ is the part you thought was wrong.”

An often powerful depiction of learning a new language.