Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Immigrant as Spy

2009; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 31; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/abr.0.0045

2153-4578

Hyungji Park,

Asian American and Pacific Histories

The Immigrant as Spy Hyungji Park (bio) Native Speaker (1995) graces the syllabus of every Asian American Literature course I teach, undergraduate or graduate. The book has everything—a protagonist with affective disorder; sex, politics, and arson; parental grief; an elusive white woman; intergenerational rift; espionage and betrayal; and a large photo of the author himself on the back cover of the paperback edition. My choice for this American Book Review assignment was simple: for an English literature academic of Korean heritage, teaching Korean students in Korea, the one essential, indeed inescapable, text is Chang-rae Lee's debut novel of language, race, and the complex psychology of immigrant unassimilability. In any context, Native Speaker is a natural choice for an "essential" Asian American literary text. The novel is a powerful re-writing of Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man (1952) that features language rather than race as the central trope. The novel is at once psychologically rich and estranging, inviting us to share in emotions that seem universal and yet which ultimately resist our empathy. Moreover, the novel inaugurates the visibility of "crossover" Korean American writers who are able to claim an audience based upon the merits of their writing rather than the market premium of being a writer of "color." But why Chang-rae Lee's novel is particularly essential for me is positional in ways that require an understanding of South Korea today and of my students at Yonsei University, Korea's premier private, and historically most internationalized, university. South Korea in the twenty-first century is a curious, contradictory place. The last half-century's breakneck-speed development has created a time warp and a "generation gap" in every decade. The Korean population is fractured into a conservative older generation entering retirement; a formerly radical, disillusioned middle generation; and an indifferent, apolitical younger generation; all three groups bound together by a deeply traditional streak. Indeed, Korea is at once flagrantly nationalistic and deeply embarrassed about that nationalism; much of the population finds patriotism old-fashioned and unsophisticated, and yet tens of thousands of people rush out into the streets to celebrate Korea's place in the World Cup finals or to mourn the passing of a former president. While the internal rifts are immense, Korea is a country that generally tries to put its best foot forward when it comes to the international stage, to represent itself to the "world out there." The hallyu wave of the 1990s turned Korea into an exporter of popular culture, in the form of melodramatic or opulent serial dramas such as Winter Sonata or Jewel in the Palace or "K-pop" music by stars such as BoA and Rain. Meanwhile, Korea has a new version of the "one-drop rule," claiming diasporic Koreans into the fold of the motherland: Michelle Wie, the American golfer (entirely genetically Korean, if such a thing exists), is "Korean," of course, as is Hines Ward, the half-African American, half-Korean wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers. For Korea, very conscious of and interested in the representation and representability of Korea and Koreans on a global stage, Native Speaker poses one case study of this diasporic Korea, of Henry Park's passage through marriage, work, and politics in New York City. Of course, some of Chang-rae Lee's resume enhances his status as Korea's darling Korean American writer in ways that have little to do with his writing. He is the son of a doctor emigrant (and therefore part of the elite class of US emigrants within the very class-conscious society that is Korea), and a graduate of and a faculty member at Ivy League institutions. If American audiences tend to be sympathetic toward the underdog, Korean audiences tend to have an unabashed attraction toward the proven success case, the "biggest name" in the field. Moreover, at my university, Chang-rae Lee's fame is even more certain since he charmed students and colleagues over a couple of two-week stints in residence, teaching creative writing to students at Underwood International College. As a teacher of Asian American literature in Korea in 2009, I find this current interest in diasporic Korea has...