Changes

|title=Mambo In Chinatown

|author=Jean Kwok

|publisher=Riverhead

|date=July 2014

|website=

|video=

|summary=Charlie leaves her kitchen job to work in a dance studio, but can she live up to the glamour of the place? An intriguing and perfectly executed look at life as a Chinese American living in New York.

}}

The daughter of an immigrant noodle maker, who lives with her father and younger sister in a one room apartment in Chinatown, is not the sort of person you might imagine as a skilled and elegant dancer. And, indeed, Charlie isn’t any of those things as we meet her. By day she washes pots in her father’s restaurant, by night she encourages her sister Lisa to succeed in school and succeed in a way that Charlie herself wasn’t able to. But she dreams of more, and when an entry level job at a dance school is advertised, she suddenly wants it more than anything she’s ever wanted, ever.