Hybridizing Genres and Cultural Ambivalence in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker
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This essay examines the thematic continuum between Chang-rae Lee's reworking of generic conventions of the bildungsroman and the spy novel in Native Speaker. Reading Native Speaker as a novel not only about Asian American inclusion but also about Asian American authoring, I posit that Lee courts the mainstream American reading public by tactfully mixing conventions of the bildungsroman and the spy novel. Appropriating the two genres, Lee enacts a literary equivalent of John Kwang's political project that privileges heterogeneity and hybridity. The bildungsroman, a representative Asian American literary expression, has tended to articulate Asian American integration into the nation, often subscribing to the 'model minority' myth. Native Speaker uses a major staple of the bildungsroman by following how Henry makes sense of his childhood to construct a public identity. Unlike conventional bildungsromans, however, Lee presents Henry's coming-to-terms with society as something to be undone rather than something to be accomplished by the end of the novel. Native Speaker problematizes successful cultural bildung by describing Henry's spying as a function of his successful American education. Lee exploits the familiar trope of the inscrutable Asian spy by casting a Korean American spy as his protagonist, but he complicates the old association between the Asian spy and the 'yellow peril'; Distinguishing Henry from stereotypical Asian agents as well as conventional spies, Lee opposes the logic behind the 'yellow peril' in favor of a principle of hybridity. Appropriating as well as disrupting cultural expectations of Asian Americans and the literary conventions that code such expectations, Lee suggests "a double articulation" (in the Bhabhaian sense) as a viable strategy for Asian American authorship.
Abstract
This essay examines the thematic continuum between Chang-rae Lee's reworking of generic conventions of the bildungsroman and the spy novel in Native Speaker. Reading Native Speaker as a novel not only about Asian American inclusion but also about Asian American authoring, I posit that Lee courts the mainstream American reading public by tactfully mixing conventions of the bildungsroman and the spy novel. Appropriating the two genres, Lee enacts a literary equivalent of John Kwang's political project that privileges heterogeneity and hybridity. The bildungsroman, a representative Asian American literary expression, has tended to articulate Asian American integration into the nation, often subscribing to the 'model minority' myth. Native Speaker uses a major staple of the bildungsroman by following how Henry makes sense of his childhood to construct a public identity. Unlike conventional bildungsromans, however, Lee presents Henry's coming-to-terms with society as something to be undone rather than something to be accomplished by the end of the novel. Native Speaker problematizes successful cultural bildung by describing Henry's spying as a function of his successful American education. Lee exploits the familiar trope of the inscrutable Asian spy by casting a Korean American spy as his protagonist, but he complicates the old association between the Asian spy and the 'yellow peril'; Distinguishing Henry from stereotypical Asian agents as well as conventional spies, Lee opposes the logic behind the 'yellow peril' in favor of a principle of hybridity. Appropriating as well as disrupting cultural expectations of Asian Americans and the literary conventions that code such expectations, Lee suggests "a double articulation" (in the Bhabhaian sense) as a viable strategy for Asian American authorship.
참고문헌 (16)
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