Book Review: Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee

Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee

Literature-in-the-hyphen, with its characters who have culturally “hyphenated” identities, is now part of the mainstream American education curriculum, as well it should be. The best of such literature draws us in and offers us the opportunity to see the world with a culturally-distinct, binocular vision. The “-American” cultures that imbue these works with essential contextual nuance simultaneously serve as a stand-in for the overall American national cultural fabric. We are born into a culture that claims authority in the person of our family and we are propelled into a stereotype of a national culture that demands adoption.

Native Speaker’s first-person narrator, Henry Park, is the roughly-woven protagonist. The warp and woof of first-generation immigrants can initially produce a somewhat uneven intertwining. The threads of Park’s life tug against each other in ways that leave his blended fabric an awkward fit.

Park’s parents immigrated to the U.S. yet live within their more comfortable cultural community as Koreans first and as Korean-Americans second. His father’s strict adherence to the authoritarian ways of Korean families abrades Park’s developing mixed cultural identity. His resentment of his family’s preservation of Korean ways continues into Park’s adulthood when he feels the strain of his (attempted) adoption of American ways even more deeply. That contrast becomes more striking  with his marriage to an American-born white woman, Lelia. Their child, who has died before the story begins. The circumstances for this loss serve as a poignant trope for bigotry’s sometimes dire consequences. Lee sees that failure to support cultural and racial diversity causes serious rifts among its multicultural components-- rifts that are too often deadly. Henry and Lelia struggle in the wake of the loss of their much loved son. The question of whether their marriage has also died restates an ambivalence about cultural interweaving.  

Park-as-narrator is uncharacteristically open about his personality’s mismatch to the dominant American culture; his extreme reserve is ill-matched to the comparatively open and blunt styles of Americans (such as his wife). And while Park-as-narrator lays bare his wish, yet inability, to transform his personality to become more “American” (especially in his interpersonal relations), Park-as-character is an extraordinarily private man who operates in the dark shadows of a Korean (-American) underworld, working hard to reveal nothing about himself. He methodically adopts professional identities that serve his purpose, then discards them. But even in this, Park has great difficulty with the segregated dimensions of his identity. Again, there is danger-- even death-- if these distinct identities begin to integrate.

The integration of who we are is a challenge for all of us. As with all fine literature, Native Speaker speaks to this larger truth.

Freedom of Speech: us versus them

It was not that long ago that the U.S. electorate was not so polarized. There were very clear and significant differences between the two major political parties, but there was also an assumption that the job of an elected official was to understand other perspectives and to come up with solutions that edged the government closer to that elected official’s long-term goal while incorporating elements of “common ground” goals and negotiating compromises so that all parties would be able to support the resulting legislation.

This particular election cycle has become such a shouting match among certain candidates and voters that even if one wanted to understand diverse perspectives, those perspectives would be difficult to hear amidst the din of demonizing rhetoric.

Today, it appears to be to a politician’s advantage to demonize an opponent and even to instill fear in voters. Inspiring fear pays at the ballot box. Placing blame on anyone other than the voter pays too: Victims! Rise up against those who want to harm you! The psychological notion of “the other” has been at play in societies since before the time of human beings: What’s different and unfamiliar is to be feared. To maintain that fear in contemporary society we must focus on what is different, magnify the potential danger, and ignore all there is that is the same or quite similar. We now see those fears manifested within the populace as anger, echoing a few candidates’ visible, audible display of that emotion.

Because noticing differences is hardwired in our brains, it is the job of the society to remind us of what we have in common and why it’s in our best interest to cooperate (at least to some extent). When those with power in a society choose to fan fear-flames instead, “followers” instincts about fearing “the other” are magnified rather than tempered. Fight or flight? Follow the leader and fight against our fellow citizens. Winner take all.

In the U.S. mythology, people are entitled to their points of view, to what they consider to be priorities, to how they make decisions (through religion, science, deductive logic, emotional appeal, conspiracy theories, simple adoption of the opinions of others, a coin toss). But we also— consciously or not— believe that we are entitled to judge others’ views, priorities, and decision-making processes from within our own value system and approaches to problem-defining and -solving. This amounts to believing that (other) people are “entitled” to have “ignorant, un-American” opinions based on “lies.” While this kind of judgment takes a certain amount of hubris in many situations, it’s nearly impossible to avoid judging another’s opinions against our own hardened beliefs.

How far can we realistically be expected to bend in respecting someone else’s point of view? Even if we philosophically believe that others are entitled to believe what they believe, I think there are limits that most of us still have beyond which we simply can’t respect that person’s beliefs. And if we are convinced that all hope will be lost if another’s beliefs prevail, a certain desperation takes hold that leads to not even believing someone else is entitled to express those beliefs.

Ideally, we would neither shrug our shoulders and say, “You’re entitled to believe whatever you want” (then walk away) nor become enraged and say, “Believe what I believe because you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.” We’d insist on sitting together, without rage, and “seek first to understand then to be understood.” But you know what? People actually have gotten angry with me for suggesting that rage isn’t our best option as a society right now and claim that listening to someone with another point of view will just magnify their rage-- as if they have no control over their own emotional responses.

Because we all know that yelling at someone and making highly derogatory characterizations of him/her is not a convincing way to get that person to embrace different beliefs, it is clear to me that, right now, there is no desire to actually convince anyone to change their beliefs. I guess we're entitled to work that hard to prevent consensus, but from my perspective it's difficult to accept that we can't do better, perhaps quelling that din and dampening those flames with the goal of bringing that U.S. myth closer to reality.