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Native Writer as Native Speaker: A Reading of Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker

Defining Chang-rae Lee’s 1995 Native Speaker as a touchstone by which one can assess the limits and promises of the writer, this article examines the ways in which Lee carves out a niche as an ethnic writer and tries to go beyond such a labeling in his debut. A dilemma for a person caught between two worlds like Henry is to live within the hyphen that defines his or her identity and yet to be able to articulate the hyphenation. Can one transgress or transcend the hyphen itself without obviating any possibility of articulation and representation? Compared to Henry’s father who is a successful first-generation Korean immigrant, Kwang figures as a man whose political goals expand the purview of family loyalty honored by Henry’s father and encompass all immigrants, all nationalities. Kwang refuses to remain simply “a minority politician.” John Kwang’s political enterprise is not simply a matter of establishing himself and resisting the dominant culture that seeks to marginalize him. It becomes rather a space wherein a contingent formation of Asian American identity appears in relation to multiple identifications which are themselves driven by specific contingencies. Lee illustrates how Henry and Kwang as Asian Americans belong to neither of the identities mediated by the hyphen in the strident, aggressive atmosphere of New York City, a microcosm of multiethnic America. As such, Henry’s dilemma is merged with and expanded into John Kwang’s project of political affiliation, thereby bringing into sharp relief the question of how not to be “another ethnic pol” overlaps with that of how not to be another ethnic writer.