According to Tina Chen’s reading of the novel, “[f]or Henry there is no ‘solution’
to the dilemma of his [Korean and American] identity” (660). As Henry recalls, when he was young, he used to awake before dawn and step outside on the front porch. At that time, everything was so quiet, and he seemed to get away from the hubbub made by his Korean parents, the taunting kids, and his English teacher showing how to pronounce his American name. “I’d then run back inside and look in the mirror,” says Henry, “desperately hoping in that solitary moment to catch a glimpse of who I truly was; but looking back at me was just the same boy again, no clearer than before, unshakably lodged in that difficult face” (Native Speaker 323). Henry himself also considers that he still cannot figure out his true identity and appears to be trapped in the ceaseless struggles of identification. Even so, however, he still has a more
different view on the Korean and American culture than he did before. Meanwhile, he changes his attitude toward national and ethnic identity as well. Above all, he is supposed to be a cultural bridge of Korea and America. All of these urge him to be
himself more, which I consider can be thought of as the result of Henry’s Bildung.
Toward the close of the novel, Kwang tells Henry that Eduardo is a traitor in his team. He betrays his trust and their friendship. As a matter of fact, he works for De Roos, Kwang’s opponent in the mayoral election. Out of disappointment and abhorrence of Eduardo’s disloyalty, Kwang confesses to contriving the bombing, which indeed has a great effect on Henry. Henry used to admire Kwang very much and even view him as a paradigm of wonderful assimilation. As he narrates, “[John Kwang] was how I imagined a Korean [in the US] would be, at least one living in any renown” (Native Speaker 304). Nevertheless, because of the crime, Kwang’s image of a perfect assimilist is broken, which makes Henry lose the respectable and imitating object. Initially, he is firmly convinced that immigrants or people of foreign descent in America can be well-assimilated as natives due to Kwang as well as his positive attitude different from other Korean immigrants, just like what Henry says: Kwang is
“such a natural American” (Native Speaker 326). With the failure of Kwang, however, Henry’s thinking has changed. After the bombing and the money club scandal, he goes to Kwang’s house again. A realtor guides and introduces him to the house. When asked who lived in the house before, the realtor just answers that the house was once owned by foreigners, and they have gone back to “their country” (Native Speaker 347). Kwang has been a political celebrity, a legal citizen; nevertheless, the realtor still views him as an alien. From the reply, Henry seems to realize that it is impossible for people like him to become a “real” American regardless of any kind of
assimilation. For the whites, they are forever immigrants, forever foreigners. Even though he still cannot unravel the dilemma of his Korean and American identity eventually, he “resolve[s] his identity crisis by unwittingly casting himself as a white manqué” (Engles 45). That is to say, now he at least understands it is out of the question for him to be or become like a white. In addition, because of Kwang and his
children, he can accept his Koreanness more.
At Kwang’s house, Henry meets his two children, Peter and John Jr., and reminds him of Mitt. He further comprehends that it is unnecessary for him and his son to discard the Korean culture in order to reside in America. After the birth of Mitt, he is surprised that Mitt looks more Korean than Caucasian. As he narrates, “I was the one who was hoping whiteness for Mitt, being fearful of what I might have bestowed on him” (Native Speaker 285). He does not want his son to have a minority identity and to experience an identity crisis like his. Moreover, Henry is always cautious with his son’s education, especially English the language. He even does not want to read his son stories due to his over heedfulness of speech. He fears that he “might handicap him, stunt the speech blooming in his brain” (Native Speaker 239).
Nevertheless, Peter, a ten-year-old boy, changes Henry’s thinking and further pushes him to rethink the Korean culture. The child is very polite, and constantly pays attention to Korean courtesy. He even communicates with Henry in Korean. Similarly, his younger brother, John Jr., also watches out for his manners, and speaks Korean to his father and Henry. Both Peter and John Jr. still keep their Koreanness and are well-behaved even though they live in the US. On the contrary, Henry and his father do not think so. They let Mitt “raucously trample over all [their] custom and
ceremony” (Native Speaker 266). Henry continues to narrate, “[o]ur Mitt, untethered.
He’d tug at my father’s pant legs during church sermons, roam the shadows of restaurant tables, publicly address his mother by her given name: all these spoils of our American life” (Native Speaker 266). Compared with the politeness and
punctiliousness of Peter and John Jr., Mitt is much freer. As described, he is
untethered from the constraint of the Korean culture. On top of this, Henry even hopes that his son “would never learn [Korean] the old language, this was never in question, and . . . that he would grow up with a singular sense of his world, a life univocal,
which might have offered him the authority and confidence that his broad half-yellow face could not” (Native Speaker 266-67). He wants his son to know English only, for in this way, he can become more American in spite of his half-Korean blood. Henry firmly believes that Koreanness would be an obstacle for his son’s future and identification.
Nevertheless, after meeting Kwang’s children, Henry sighs, “this is [just]
assimilist sentiment, part of my own ugly and half-blind romance with the land”
(Native Speaker 267). In fact, it is he himself that rejects Koreanness, which makes him feel more American. Ironically, Mitt does not think so. Instead, he can appreciate the difference among Henry, Lelia, and his grandfather. Henry recalls, “he [Mitt]
could mimic the finest gradations in our English and Korean, those notes of who we were, and perhaps he could imagine, if ever briefly, that this was our truest world, rich with disparate melodies” (Native Speaker 240). He finds that Mitt does not favor either English or Korean. He can actually roam between the two languages, savoring them, even possibly taking it for granted that it is natural to have the tongues surround him. Aside from Mitt’s education and cultivation, Henry seems to ignore that he is a connection between two worlds, two nations, two races, along with two cultures. As Jane Yoo criticizes, “Henry will never be a ‘native speaker,’ either from the viewpoint of his Korean roots or American upbringing. He will serve as a bridge between both worlds” (58). Henry himself indeed can also be viewed as a cultural hybrid of Korea and America. As far as education is concerned, he is cultivated with “Confucian upbringing” (Native Speaker 314) but educated in the American way. For their interracial marriage, Henry and Lelia transgress the ethnic boundaries of the yellow and the white. Their marriage symbolizes a possibility of the eradication of racial discrimination. What is more, when it comes to language, Henry can be viewed as a bilingual even though he cannot pronounce English words very perfectly and cannot
speak Korean well, either. All in all, for him, it is not until knowing the Kwangs that he realizes “one individual can belong to two cultures” (Lazear 97).
Furthermore, as far as national and ethnic identities are concerned, Henry tends to identify with nation first. He strives to let himself melt into the white society even though he is American-born; however, he is always nervous about his Korean identity.
He is afraid that people do not accept or identify with him due to his yellow face. He hopes to be regarded as a “true” American by means of speaking English perfectly. He even feels ashamed and angry at those ridiculous accents of his father and other immigrants. He cannot endure “all that Konglish, Spanglish, Jive” (Native Speaker 337). But now, after experiencing the departure of Lelia and the assignments of Luzan and Kwang, he changes his thoughts and can accept his Koreanness more. As he narrates, “I think I would give most anything to hear my father’s talk again, the crash and bang and stop of his language, always hurtling by. I will listen for him forever in the streets of this city. I want to hear the rest of them, too” (Native Speaker 337). This is because he has known New York the city, “a city of words” (Native Speaker 344).
In other words, this is a city of multi-languages. A city shows its multi-cultural
features through the multiplicity of languages. Now he knows “[h]is marks, contoured on his face and lodged in his over-careful speech, are ones that cannot be voluntarily relinquished” (Chen 646). Since he cannot erase these physical marks, all he has to do is to accept them.
At the end of the novel, Lelia says goodbye to her students, calling out their names in their own mother tongues. As Henry says, these names represent “who we are” (Native Speaker 349). It is only through these names that these students from various ethnic backgrounds, including him, can feel his true self. By doing so,“[n]o matter what immigration background, every student is recognized” (Ludwig 238).
Accordingly, I consider though Henry does not completely solve his identity dilemma,
he still achieves certain sort of Bildung. This is because he finally gives up the spy career that requires him to live under fake identity, and tries to be himself. More importantly, he can accept the Korean culture more. As for the query of identity, though Chang-rae lee does not figure out a concrete answer in Native Speaker, he solves the puzzle in his next novel A Gesture Life, through the life of Jiro Kurohata.
Chapter Three
Beyond Perfection: The Bildung of a Model Minority in Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life
[F]or many in contemporary culture[,] truth resides in the traumatic or abject subject, in the diseased or damaged body.
Hal Foster, “The Return of the Real”
Assimilation, which appears to be an excellent method for immigrants to melt into a foreign society, is nothing but self-deception. In A Gesture Life, Jiro Kurohata, or Franklin Hata, a Korean Japanese as well as a Japanese American, always attempts to live up to the ideal of a model minority both in Japan and in America. Each of the adapting experiences is accompanied by an anguished trauma—the death of his lover Kkutaeh (or known as K) and the departure of his daughter Sunny respectively.
Nevertheless, as Baret Magarian states in her book review on A Gesture Life, “a handful of traumatic experiences from the past can forge identity” (56). Hata takes advantage of the model minority discourse to console and heal the traumas which stem from not only the loss of K and Sunny but his childhood in Korea as well. The very first trauma of his life, I believe, originates from the abandonment of his Korean parents, which has much to do with his model minority life in Japan.
When it comes to the ideology of model minority, according to Robert G. Lee, it implies successful ethnic assimilation (145-46). Assimilation, similar to camouflage, or Roger Caillois’ law of pure disguise,12 conceals what a person is and makes his true self invisible. This is because it is a strategy to be part of an unfamiliar
12 Anne Anlin Cheng quotes Roger Caillois’ explication concerning the law of pure disguise from The Mask of Medusa (1964) as follows: “[I]n the world of living things [for both animal and humans]
there is a law of pure disguise: that there is a leaning towards the act of passing oneself off as something or someone else… [that is] in no way to be accounted for by any biological necessity connected with the struggle for existence or natural selection” (554). For a person, assimilation, like disguise, functions as a means of existence, urging him to hide what he is so that he can live in the new surroundings. Accordingly, I would regard assimilation as camouflage or disguise.
environment, a way to turn visible in the new surroundings. Likewise, the ideology of model minority, just like assimilation, can function as camouflage in this regard. In order to forget the traumas, he tries his best to conceal what he is within “various forms of camouflage” (Cheng 558). In the case of Hata, for example, he is a dutiful adopted son in the Japanese family, a loyal lieutenant in the barracks, and the good Doc Hata in the neighborhood of Bedley Run. All of these positive images based on the ideology of model minority enable others to accept him easily. As Verity
Ludgate-Fraser argues, “[Hata] has spent the better part of his life trying to be what he thinks others expect him to be” (19). Furthermore, for Hata, the model minority discourse not only makes his true self invisible but also obscures his Korean identity.
Paradoxically, the discourse of model minority also makes him visible. Struggling to be identified as a respected citizenship, Hata gets social visibility in Japan and in America.
In addition, Hata’s traumas, which are inextricably interwoven with the ideology of model minority, are significant for his awakening. Throughout A Gesture Life, he constantly recalls his past. By means of his narration, the readers realize how together the trauma and the model minority discourse affect his life. In Japan, Hata’s model minority life leads to another trauma—the demise of K. To bury the agony caused by the death of K, he adopts Sunny, a Korean orphan, and restarts his life as a model minority in America. Nevertheless, his good-man mindset causes a crisis of father-daughter relationship, which finally causes the other trauma in his life. For Hata, selfhood is always screened behind the trauma as well as the ideology of model minority. Through Sunny and the recall of K, he finally comprehends that the
ideology is nothing but an illusion. It is impossible for an outsider to become an insider. Instead, it is more important for him to be what he is. Meanwhile, he also changes his attitude toward ethnic and national identity, reaching a reconciliation for
his multiple identities as a Korean, a Japanese, and an American. With understanding as such, he ultimately leaves Bedley Run and disappears into nowhere as a way to once again start a new life for his “real” self, with the mature wisdom he has learned after a lifetime of apprenticeship.
The chapter aims to delve into Hata’s process of Bildung. First, I intend to discuss the relationship between his traumas and the ideology of model minority.
Furthermore, I will scrutinize the two crucial crises in his model minority life—the death of K and the loss of Sunny. After this, I would like to examine the change of his attitude toward ethnic and national identity before and after his Bildung. Eventually, I hope to clarify his realization that the ideology of model minority is nothing but an illusion, a disillusionment, which could be viewed as the accomplishment of his Bildung.