Product Description

Henry Park, a Korean-American private spy, is challenged by a new assignment to investigate a rising politician, but the secrets he uncovers threaten his cultural identity and his relationship with his wife. Reprint.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36930 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 349 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781573225311
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
Korean-American Henry Park is "surreptitious, B+ student of life, illegal alien, emotional alien, Yellow peril: neo-American, stranger, follower, traitor, spy ..." or so says his wife, in the list she writes upon leaving him. Henry is forever uncertain of his place, a perpetual outsider looking at American culture from a distance. As a man of two worlds, he is beginning to fear that he has betrayed both -- and belongs to neither.

From Publishers Weekly
Espionage acts as a metaphor for the uneasy relationship of Amerasians to American society in this eloquent, thought-provoking tale of a young Korean-American's struggle to conjoin the fragments of his personality in culturally diverse New York City. Raised in a family and culture valuing careful control of emotions and appearances, narrator Henry Park, son of a successful Korean-American grocer, works as an undercover operative for a vaguely sinister private intelligence agency. He and his "American wife," Lelia, are estranged, partly as a result of Henry's stoical way of coping with the recent death of their young son. Henry is also having trouble at work, becoming emotionally attached to the people he should be investigating. Ruminating on his upbringing, he traces the path that has led to his present sorrow; as he infiltrates the staff of a popular Korean-American city councilman, he discovers the broader, societal context of the issues he has been grappling with personally. Writing in a precise yet freewheeling prose that takes us deep into Henry's head, first-novelist Lee packs this story, whose intrigue is well measured and compelling, with insights into both current political events and timeless questions of love, culture, family bonds and identity. This is an auspicious debut for Riverhead Books, Putnam's new division. First serial to Granta; QPB selection; audio rights to Brilliance; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Assigned to spy on a fellow Korean American, Henry Park faces an acute crisis of cultural conscience. LJ's reviewer found Henry a "wonderful, honest creation."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

An American Tragedy
If you read a great deal, you recognize that only a few books are truly profound and will be regarded as noteworthy among those written in a particular era. Having just finished "Native Speaker" I was both moved, and extremely impressed. This is clearly one of the distinguished books of this generation.

Chang Rae Lee is clearly a man of acute depth and insights, and he eloquently represents distinctly different cultures, and the angst, disillusionment, and metamorphisis arising from survival that affects immigrants. He also probes fundamental issues of family, loyalty, betrayal, and the question of what constitutes success. While he employs Korean, and Korean American prototypes, his themes and issues are fundamentally human, but perhaps distinctly American.

Furthermore, Lee is a superb wordsmith and a beautiful writer, with a masterful command of the English language, which he skillfully and artistically, employs to convey his complex tale and profound concepts.

I was motivated to read this book when I read that this was the book that had been recommended by many as that which diverse, fractious, and iconoclastic NYC should claim as it's own in the trend for each of the nation's cities to focus on a book to read. However, this is an important book for all Americans, as it trully speaks to the American experience. I noted one review compared it to Ellison's "Invisible Man". While I think that it stands alone, if I were to compare it with other American classics they would instead be Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and Richard Wright's "Native Son". I am very pleased that I chose to read this book; it is noble, touching, and important.

Native Speaker: A Post Asian American Novel
Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker is arguably one of the most beautifully written books of the 20th Century. Written when Lee was only 28 years old as his MFA thesis project, Native Speaker is a moving and often painful account of the immigrant/1.5 generation's experience in the United States. While the book moves back and forth between Henry Park's life as a spy and his relationship with his estranged wife, Lelia, the underlying theme encompassing the entire novel is that of the invisibility and displacement of Asian Americans in the United States.
While some reviewers have deemed Henry's career as a spy a curious or strange career, anyone familiar with the invisiblity of the Asian American population in the United States will appreciate and empathize with this career choice. As a spy, Henry's job is to be invisible, the unseen. As a first generation Korean American in the United States, Henry is often the unseen minority who because of his skin color and the stereotypes of the quiet, passive, model minority keep him in the background of society. In sum, the entire novel as well as Henry himself serve as a metaphor and commentary of the invisibility of Asian Americans in the United States, while in reality they are a large percentage of society with the immigrant population continuing to grow.
In addition to crafting a story commenting on Asian Americans in the United States, Lee also created an interracial relationship between Henry and Lelia (Scotch American) free of the exoticism and/or fetishism often found in stories involving interracial relationships. While there is little doubt that Henry loves Lelia, their relationship often causes him to undergo feelings of self-contempt and inferiorty as he fears his Korean ethnicity, Asian race, and perceived imperfect English mark him as less than an equal partner. While Lelia is free with her emotions and wishes for Henry to react in the same way, his upbrining in a somewhat violent as well as verbally repressed family often causes him to react to emotional situations with stoicism and silence. Thus, while Henry and Lelia are perfectly matched in many ways, they must still negotiate their differences in culture and ethnicity. The ethnic and cultural differences that the couple face are perhaps most apparent in their diverging beliefs on how to raise their mixed race son. Here, Henry's feelings of inferiorty surface as he worries that his son will look too Korean, will not speak perfect English, and will be subject to the same kind of abuse Henry suffered as a child. On the contrary, while Lelia becomes more consciousness of her whiteness and the privilege it carries after becoming a mother to an Korean American child, she is the one who encourages Mitt's learning about his culture as well as the Korean language.
With the creation of Henry and Lelia's child, Mitt, Lee provides a commentary and his own take on the Eurasian character so often depicted in Anglo as well as Asian American literature as the "tragic" Eurasian, "yellow peril," or the "best of both worlds." Lee's foray into expanding the definition of Asian American (which he continues to do in his later novels, A Gesture Life and Aloft) begins with Mitt as the Hapa child and the first mixed child born of both families.
Finally, Native Speaker should not solely be classified as Asian American fiction but must be categorized as "American" literature (a category so exclusive that only one Asian American writer to date has been admitted) as it expands beyond the Korean American and Asian American experience to include anyone who remains invisible while striving for visibility and recognition (i.e., all immigrants/refugees at one time or another living in America),and stands out as one of the best written works of the 20th century and beyond, as the prose places Lee is a category of writers whose skill with manipulating and crafting the English language draws readers in and touches them to the core. Native Speaker is truly one of those rare books you can pick up at any time, read any page and become instantly absorbed.

Literary Review of Native Speaker
This novel depicts the problems involving alienation, isolation, and self-identity crisis that the immigrants face as the minority and outsiders in the American society. This novel takes the structure of detective fiction, developing a story of a spy who investigates an ambitious politician. Its main action concerns an amazingly charismatic New York City councilman, John Kwang, the idol of thousands of immigrant voters in his home district of Queens. Someone wants to see him go down, and it is Henry's job to provide the dirty laundry. Also this story of trust and betrayal is connected together with other, more delicate threads: his troubled relationship with his traditional Korean father, his troubled marriage to his American wife? His Confucian inability to express live to either of them except through silence. Beautifully written and intriguingly plotted, the novel interweaves politics, love, family, and loss as Park starts to make sense of the rhythm of his life. As he does, his experiences illuminate the many-layered immigrant experience in general, and the Asian immigrant experience in particular, in a way that many readers will understand and appreciate. Through the life of Henry Park, the author exposes the alienation and isolation that many immigrants and their children faces from the American society. Also he depicts the conflicts between 1st generation immigrants and 2nd generation America-born children caused from the cultural differences and the incompatible perspectives toward their lives. Through the motif of a spy, the author successfully creates feeling of uncertainty of identity and place from a point view of a perpetual outcast looking at American culture from a distance. Beginning to fear That he has betrayed both Korean and American worlds and belong to neither, the only thing that Henry Park acquired from his life as a spy and an outsider is the confirmation of his true identity filled with pain and sorrow. There are many qualities of this novel that resembles the qualities of Romanticism of Great Gatzby as Henry Park, the hero of the novel, quests for truth of his identity and displays a strong disbelief toward civilization and love toward the nature. Also Henry Park has some characteristics of the hero of Hemingway such as NADA, inability to sleep during night, and the belief of grace under pressure. Who am I? This question is thrown to the author, Chang-rae Lee himself as well as to Henry Park. Even though he immigrated to United States when he was only three, graduated from the Yale University, and established himself as Native Speaker who uses the English as his native language, he still feels that he is an outsider who can not assimilate into American society. For this sense, we could view this novel as author's honest experience of his life. The novel Native Speaker approaches the readers as an important meaning for it deals with racial problem, a peculiar aspect of American society, and boldly exposes the alienation of modern people.