근교소설의 전복적 텍스트로서 이창래의 『가족』 읽기

Abstract

This paper proposes to read Aloft as a ‘subversive’ successor of the suburbia novel tradition. A white middle-class protagonist Jerry Battle, detailed interest in the uniformity of Long Island suburban life, alienation and desire for flight from his reality are some typical characteristics of the suburbia novel. Suburbia novels have been traditionally considered a white-centered genre in that they depict, with sympathy, the alienation and psychological poverty in the midst of material plenty felt and complained of by white middle-class suburban people. Jurca terms this feeling of ‘homeless at home’ as ‘white diaspora’ and criticizes the suburbia novel arguing that it justifies white dominance by converting those privileged people into victims of the suburban system. What makes Aloft a subversive text are its description of suburbs as racialized space and its focus on the oppression and exploitation of racial others by a white male protagonist and its aftermath. Jerry’s selfish retreat from reality and worldly cares, whose metaphor is his occasional flight in his Cessna, is challenged by the muted anger of his Korean wife Daisy’s suicide, the moving-out of his Puerto Rican lover Rita after 20 years of serving his family, and the stubborn denial of treatment for treatable cancer, and eventual death, of his daughter Theresa. Jerry matures after experiencing these crises, and brings all his remaining family into his house and helps them out with their respective difficulties. His active engaging in the ‘battle’ with reality, along with the ‘communication’ and ‘being nice to each other’ performed by Jerry’s newly-formed family, is distinctly different from the prevalent affect of white diaspora in traditional suburbia novels. In conclusion, Aloft takes up the tradition of the suburbia novel to subvert its white-oriented assumptions and explore its new possibilities in a multicultural society.