Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making in Comfort Woman and A Gesture Life

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of cultural citizenship in Nora Okja Kellers Comfort Woman and Chang-rae Lees A Gesture Life. Cultural citizenship operates in an uneven field of structural inequalities which exclude and marginalize people who differ in gender, race, sexuality and age, and needs to be understood within the context of the aspirations and perceptions of people who occupy subordinate social positions. Basing my study on Aihwa Ongs concept of cultural citizenship, especially in the processes of subject-making, I analyze how the four Korean-Americans in the novels undergo different processes of subject-making as American citizens in immigrant society. I argue that gender plays an important role in the way the characters formulate their cultural citizenship. As a shaman working in Hawaii, Akiko, the protagonist of Comfort Woman, practices her cultural citizenship in the in-between territory of the living and the dead whereas the hero of A Gesture Life, Hata, practices his by integrating into his community as its primary citizen. But for both, their Asian past is something that they must come to terms with, a task handed down to their children, Beccah and Sunny, the second immigrant generation.