Honeysuckle House

An all-American girl with Chinese ancestors and a new immigrant from China find little in common when they meet in their fourth grade classroom, but they are both missing their best friends and soon discover other connections. Alienation, longing, prejudice, and cultural difference is touched on in this immigrant story told in the voices of two ten-year-old girls. Sarah and Tina are fourth graders. The most important thing in the world to Sarah — American-born Chinese — is the recent departure of her best friend, Victoria. She misses her terribly. Tina has just recently moved to Cincinnati from Shanghai, and is trying to make sense of a whole new world — pretty much clueless to all the things Sarah is hip to. The two girls are paired together in school, as if Asian appearance were proof of parallel lives and experience. ('I don't speak Chinese,' Sarah keeps having to explain.) It's the daily, common stuff of childhood intrigue that finally manages to connect their stories and forge a friendship. A whole constellation of adult concerns swirl around them — green card worries, assimilation, absent fathers, family tensions — but Andrea Cheng remains true to the heart and voice and vision of two ten-year-old girls, in a story which blends tears and games, drama and play.