Recensori in anteprima

Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wong grew up in NY’s Chinatown, the older daughter of a Beijing ballerina and noodle maker. Though an ABC (America-born Chinese), Charlie’s entire world has always been limited to Chinatown. Now grown, she lives in the same, tiny Chinatown apartment with her old- world, widower father and her 12-year-old sister, and works – miserably -- as a dishwasher at the restaurant that employs her father. But when offered a job as receptionist at a ballroom dance studio in midtown Manhattan, Charlie gains access to a world she hardly knew existed, and everything she once took to be certain turns upside down. Slowly, within this new world, shy, clumsy, unfashionable Charlie’s own natural dance talents begin to emerge, and gradually her perspective, her expectations, and her sense of self all are transformed– something she must hide, at great pains, from her father and his suspicion of all things Western. As Charlie blossoms, though, her sister becomes chronically ill, as if one sister’s rise must directly cause the other’s decline. As Pa insists on treating his ailing child exclusively with Eastern practices (which do not seem to be helping), Charlie is forced to find a way to reconcile her two selves and her two worlds –Eastern and Western, old world and new -- to rescue her sister while also preserving herself.