Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Native Speaker
Book Review: A Missed Opportunity
Summary: 3 Stars
This book is a missed opportunity. Everything about the Korean-American lifestyle is touching and often moving. The main character's father and mother, the ahjumma, and his Caucasian wife are all vivid characters. The problem I have with this book is that the spy aspect of the novel simply doesn't fit in. Lee does a good job trying to work the spy stuff into the book, but I think he ultimately fails in the end in this particular aspect. There are many excellent, poetic sentences in this book that choked me up, but there's also some lazy writing towards the end of the novel, in which there are many incomplete sentences and quotes are not accompanied by quotation marks. This type of writing is very common nowadays, but shouldn't be; it really takes away from the overall beauty of the English language and is not grammatical, either. If you want to learn about Korean-Americans, there are probably much better books out there, but this is by no means a bad read. I simply think that if the spy element were eliminated, the book would have been much more believable, though, Jack, a great character, would have to be placed in the novel in some other fashion. I bought this book at Incheon International Airport in South Korea for roughly twenty dollars, before flying back to America.Book Review: A Novel of Immigrant Experience
Summary: 4 Stars
Chang-Rae Lee wrote his first novel, "Native Speaker", which describes the experience of a young Korean man in New York City at the age of 28. The protagonist, Henry Park, is the son of immigrants. His mother died while Henry was young and Henry's father has risen to wealth through difficult work in the ownership of small groceries in the poorer sections of New York City. The family is Christian but of a Confucian background. Henry throughout has much more difficulty expressing emotions and feelings than most Westerners. Henry marries a well-to-do and beautiful white woman, Leila. They have a son, Mitt, who tragically dies. Henry and Leila have difficulty in their marriage arising from, among other things, different cultural expectations, Henry's job, and the death of their son.
Henry, the prototypical outsider, works as a spy for a private investigative agency whose clients or missions are never fully defined in the novel. Henry seems to get over-involved with the people whose lives he infiltrates. He became close to a Phillipino psychiatrist who offered Henry, through friendship and therapy, insights into Henry's life. But most of the novel involves Henry's relationship with another individual on whom he spies: a Korean New York City politician named John Kwang who has aspirations to run for mayor.
The book describes the life of Korean immigrants and the difficult culture shock of living in a new land. Lee also describes well the vibrant and continuously varied life of New York City, with its diversity, as seen by his protagonist. I thought the overriding metaphor of the book, the immigrant as outsider and spy, was pat and unconvincing. It was too deriviative of Elison's "Invisible Man" and Lee never convincingly explains how Henry becomes a spy or why his experience as a spy should, somehow, be regarded as representative of the Korean immigrant experience. The book includes some lovely lyrically written passages, some perceptive scenes (those involving the psychiatrist, for example) and some chilling scenes of the modus operandi of the spying operation. But much of this novel is padded and written in a routine prose. I frequently grew impatient with it.
The book aptly describes the travails of immigrants new to the United States, particularly those from Korea. But the immigrant experience has, in general, been described more convincingly in many other novels. In some ways the book seemed to me a not fully successful amalgamation of Ellison's "Invisible Man" as it described the African-American experience and Henry Roth's "Call it Sleep" as itlyrically described the early Jewish immigrant experience through the eyes of a young boy.
Henry Park has a torn, ambivalent attitude towards the United States based upon the difficulties of his life. What stayed with me in the book was the speaker's love for this country, frequently expressed lyrically. For example:
"Americans, one of them would say, are a wonderful and exuberant people. They dance, they play-fight, they puff up their lips and blow out their chests. they enjoy using their hands. They seem to live always at a football match". p. 340
"Still I love it here. I love these streets lined with big American sedans and livery cars and vans. I love the early morning storefronts opening up one by one, shopkeepers talking as they crank their awnings down. ... I follow the strolling Saturday families of brightly wrapped Hindus and then the black-clad Hasidim, and step into all the old churches that were once German and then Korean and are now Vietnamese. And I love the brief Queens sunlight at the end of the day, the warm lamp always reaching though the westward tops of that magnificent city." p.346
"Native Speaker" is a good book. It takes a hard look at the difficulties young Asians may face in the United States. The most moving and compelling part of the story remains, for me, the hope and love it expresses for our country and its promise.
Robin Friedman
Book Review: A Strange Companion
Summary: 3 Stars
Chang-Rae Lee weaves from his past experiences and present ones seamlessly, present experiences colored by his past, nothing in life is untouched by his mixed identity. The relationship with his white wife is artificial and not convincing neither is his role as a spy. But the strength of the book does not lie in the believability of his wife or his job - they are simply tools to tell a story. The story of a Korean - American who's a cultural spy who tries all his life to assimilate himself into the American culture. It is an honest story of a second generation Korean-American. This is my story and it is not my story. Chang-Rae paints the first generation Koreans with a very broad brush. I can relate to the alienation, emotional and social, the confusion, the struggle for self-identity that "Americans" will never have to go through as a wide faced yellow boy. But I grew up without a father and a very loving and very unstereotypical mother, who was affirming and strong at the same time. This book does not tell my story but it is not meant to, Chang-Rae Lee tells only his story. But it is a companion on a journey to find my place in a semi-strange land. The irony is that "an emotional alien" makes a bad companion. Chang-Rae never seems to break out from the underneath his emotional-aloofness and only shares his observations as an outsider.Book Review: A Strange Companion
Summary: 3 Stars
Chang-Rae Lee weaves from his past experiences and present ones seamlessly, present experiences colored by his past, nothing in life is untouched by his mixed identity. The relationship with his white wife is artificial and not convincing neither is his role as a spy. But the strength of the book does not lie in the believability of his wife or his job - they are simply tools to tell a story. The story of a Korean - American who's a cultural spy who tries all his life to assimilate himself into the American culture. It is an honest story of a second generation Korean-American. This is my story and it is not my story. Chang-Rae paints the first generation Koreans with a very broad brush. I can relate to the alienation, emotional and social, the confusion, the struggle for self-identity that "Americans" will never have to go through as a wide faced yellow boy. But I grew up without a father and a very loving and very unstereotypical mother, who was affirming and strong at the same time. This book does not tell my story but it is not meant to, Chang-Rae Lee tells only his story. But it is a companion on a journey to find my place in a semi-strange land. The irony is that "an emotional alien" makes a bad companion. Chang-Rae never seems to break out from the underneath his emotional-aloofness and only shares his observations as an outsider.Book Review: A huge contribution to 'American Letters'
Summary: 5 Stars
Having read only one-third of _Native Speaker_, I shouldwait to say more, but THIS is a new voice for which I havewaited too long to be coy or even complete. Chang-rae Lee is simply wonderful. His beautiful if anguished vision of what it is to live in two worlds and belong to neither is reminiscent of many, immigrant tales but unlike any other. As an adoptive parent of Korean-born children, I am elated to discover him, for he speaks not in political correctness but in a language universal, the only one that counts. Definitely a major new talent.