아시아계 미국문학의 문화 민족주의 비판: 단 리의 『예술가 연합』

Abstract

Don Lee’s The Collective (2012) presents a portrait of young Asian American writers situated in a “postracial” America. The plot’s metafictional theme focuses on the Gatsby-like Korean-American writer, Joshua Yoon, whose story is told by the first-person narrator Eric Cho, a third-generation Korean-American writer. The main issue for these minority writers is what their responsibilities and obligations are in regard to race. Joshua insists on taking a culturally nationalist position, arguing that Asian-American writers should limit their subject matter to Asians or Asian Americans. He is extremely race-conscious due to the racial discrimination he experienced as an adoptee growing up in, what he calls, the “racist town” of Boston. When Eric meets Joshua in Macalester College located in the hometown of F. Scott Fitzgerald, he quickly becomes fascinated with Joshua—mirroring Nick Caraway’s fawning of Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby. Eric is an unreliable narrator like Nick, and the attraction and repulsion Eric feels towards Joshua is effectively conveyed by this narrative technique. They form a circle of “Asian American Artist Collective” (the ‘3AC’) with a Taiwanese American painter Jessica Tsai, and re-establish the group when they met again ten years later in Boston. Joshua clashes with Esther Xing, another Asian-American writer. In the multi-ethnic Asian artist group of the late 1990s, his culturally nationalist position is seriously challenged by her denationalized position. She criticizes Joshua for being outmoded, narrow-minded, and parochial, maintaining that minority writers do not have to limit themselves to stories revolving around identity or race. Her vision of the artist is one who is free to write beyond the boundary of race. Joshua fails because he, as an idealist, has trapped himself within the position of cultural nationalism. The Collective is a critique of cultural nationalism of marginalized minority ethnic writers, but Don Lee’s use of The Great Gatsby shows that Asian american literature does belong to the larger tradition of American literature.