Through Henry and Sunny, Chang-rae Lee suggests that assimilation is not the only exit for people of different origins in the US. In Native Speaker, Henry knows too well with regard to the situation of his father as a well-behaved assimilist and a Korean alien. Henry is aware that people will not ignore their racial features just
19 Based on Bashi and McDaniel’s argument, Black and Hispanic immigrants are also included within the racial hierarchy. Nevertheless, because the thesis focuses on Korean Americans, I put more emphasis on Asian immigrants exclusively.
because of their desire for assimilation. He hopes to be truly accepted as a member of the white society via his American-born identity, along with perfect linguistic accuracy and pronunciation. However, he still worries that he will be rejected owing to his Korean traits. Besides, in A Gesture Life, Sunny also sees clearly that people do not really accepted her adoptive father despite being well-assimilated.
Both Henry and Sunny realize that for the whites, Asians are forever Asian. They are never American enough even though they are thoroughly assimilated and have been rooted in the US. In this regard, Anne Firor Scott expounds that this is because
“people see most easily things they are prepared to see and overlook those they do not expect to encounter” (7). In other words, this is all about race. The Caucasian Americans seem unable to fully accept or treat people with different colors very equally. Hence, they electively neglect the needs and hopes from Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, such as the acceptance as a member of the white society. By means of Henry, Chang-rae Lee depicts the dilemma that the descendants of the immigrants encounter. Furthermore, through Hata, Lee also delineates the struggle of the first-generation immigrants, and how eagerly they hope to integrate into the white society by the model minority discourse. Via the stories and Bildungs of Henry and Hata, Lee implies that both the first and the second generations should not forget their ethnicity in order to be viewed as Americans authentically.
In addition, through their Bildungs, Lee also comes up with his idea that Korean or Asian Americans should live without worrying about identification. As indicated by Samuel Lee, “being a Korean American does not mean that one must follow the Korean or American ways of life all the time nor that one be committed in that one culture exclusively” (294). In fact, they do not need to be troubled with the identity problem, for they are supposed to view themselves as “new residents with new identity” in America. As Ludwig argues,
We are not simply what our body is. Nor are we only what the patterns of our parents’ culture want us to be. We are more than that, and our daily negotiations therefore happen in terms of rules that can go beyond these two main traditional aspects of ‘ethnicity.’ (223)
Both race and ethnicity are just conventional signifiers of our body and culture.
People should not be defined by race or ethnicity. For Korean Americans, they are not only Koreans but also Americans indeed. They do not need to emphasize the fact that they are Americans, and it is unnecessary for them to abandon their Korean ethnicity. In this regard, Samuel Lee utilizes the orthogonal identity model to explain and to express that “identification with any culture is independent of identification with other culture” (294-95). The following figure shows the outline of the model.
Fig. 1. Orthogonal model of Korean American cultural identification20 In the model, two cultural identification dimensions are right angles to each other.
The origin of two axes is anomie, a hypothetical point where one does not have any
20 The model is created by E. R. Oetting and F. Beauvais. For more information, please refer to Oetting and Beauvais’s article—“Orthogonal Cultural Identification Theory: The Cultural Identification of Minority Adolescents.”
Korean Korean American
Bicultural Person
American Anomie
identification with any culture, similar to the alienated or marginalized state. Based on Samuel Lee’s explication,
The orthogonal identification model indicates that any pattern and any combination of cultural identification can exist. There can be persons with high bicultural identification, monocultural identification, high identification with one culture and medium identification with another, or even low identification with both cultures. (295)
While facing another culture conflicting with his ethnic background like the cases in Henry and Hata, one does not have to make an alternative decision from them. It is very likely to own them at the same time. In other words, even though Korean Americans are well-assimilated into the white culture, they still can hold their Korean identity as bicultural people if they want to. In this regard, Heike Berner also brings out his similar viewpoint in his dissertation:
“Asian” in “Asian American” is meant as a modification of “American,”
demonstrating that it is possible to be American and non-white at the same time, and that one can be part of American culture without losing the notion of one’s ethnic background, and certainly without becoming schizophrenic. (21)
Both Berner and Samuel Lee consider that biculturalism is normal and should be thought of as a trend for Korean or Asian Americans. However, just like what Mark Jerng stresses, “‘Knowing’ what it means to be Korean American seems to be far more about desire than it does any concrete understanding” (50). “Korean
American” should be more than its literal meaning or biculturalism. It is not merely concerning Korean and American. Instead, it should be realized as a new category, a new identity, just as the flag Hata waves at the end of A Gesture Life. Through deploying his novels as the Bildungsromans, Chang-rae Lee successfully conveys
his thinking about what a contemporary Korean American should be. For him, Korean Americans do not need to be identified or seek identification with the help of the model minority discourse, nor do they need to face the dilemma of national and ethnic identity. Instead, it is just because of their special identity that they are unique. They should, as a result, be themselves and see themselves as “new residents with new identity” in America. In the following section, I will share my view from my Bildung after reading the two novels.