Native Speaker Paperback – 1 March 1996
by Chang-Rae Lee (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 170 ratings
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The debut novel from critically-acclaimed and New York Times-bestselling author of On Such a Full Sea and My Year Abroad.
In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park.
Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American--a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away.
Park's harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped him as a natural spy.
But the very attributes that help him to excel in his profession put a strain on his marriage to his American wife and stand in the way of his coming to terms with his young son's death. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, his very identity is tested, and he must figure out who he is amid not only the conflicts within himself but also within the ethnic and political tensions of the New York City streets.
Native Speaker is a story of cultural alienation. It is about fathers and sons, about the desire to connect with the world rather than stand apart from it, about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.
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Print length
376 pages
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Product description
Review
- One of the year's most provocative and deeply felt first novels...a searing portrait of the immigrant experience.—Vanity Fair
- With echoes of Ralph Ellison, Chang-rae Lee's extraordinary debut speaks for another kind of invisible man: the Asian immigrant in America...a revelatory work of fiction.—Vogue
- The prose Lee writes is elliptical, riddling, poetic, often beautifully made.—The New Yorker
- Deft, delicate...The book's narrative is lyrical, its plot compelling...The novel's interwoven plots and themes, its slew of singular characters, and Henry's ongoing recollections and reflections are rich and enticing.—Boston Globe
- A tender meditation on love, loss, and family.—The New York Times Book Review
From the Back Cover
Korean American Henry Parks 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.
And now, a man of two worlds, he is beginning to fear that he has betrayed both - and belongs to neither.
About the Author
Chang-rae Lee is the author of On Such a Full Sea, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, A Gesture Life, Aloft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Selected by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best writers under forty, Chang-rae Lee teaches writing at Princeton University.
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Product details
Publisher : Riverhead Books; Reprint edition (1 March 1996)
Language : English
Paperback : 376 pages
5,615 in Espionage Thrillers (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.4 out of 5 stars 170 ratings
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Native Speaker
by Chang-rae Lee
3.73 · Rating details · 7,022 ratings · 660 reviews
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In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away.
Park's harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped him as a natural spy.
But the very attributes that help him to excel in his profession put a strain on his marriage to his American wife and stand in the way of his coming to terms with his young son's death. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, his very identity is tested, and he must figure out who he is amid not only the conflicts within himself but also within the ethnic and political tensions of the New York City streets.
Native Speaker is a story of cultural alienation. It is about fathers and sons, about the desire to connect with the world rather than stand apart from it, about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.
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Paperback, 349 pages
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aPriL does feral sometimes
Mar 05, 2013aPriL does feral sometimes rated it it was amazing
Shelves: literary
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This is a brilliant, thoughtful, subject-packed, angst-riddled, almost-noir, teeters-on-the-edge-of-soap-opera, and finally, an excellent literary first novel by a very wise writer. 'Native Speaker' is powerful and superb.
It is one of those novels where its strengths are also its weaknesses.
Ostensibly, this is narrated by a very depressed second-generation American, Korean-American Henry Park. Park is separated from his wife, separated from his son, separated from his Korean-born father and mother, separated from both American and Korean culture, but most of all, separated from himself.
Park is a spy who works for a private business called Glimmer & Company. Glimmer specializes in personal betrayal and deceit: the operatives dig into a person's conversation, make friends with the target, even volunteer to babysit - and report what they find to paying clients, who can be multicultural corporations, foreign governments, or individuals with resources. Some of their targets are political activists, unions and journalists. Sometimes the targets die.
The boss of Glimmer & Company, Dennis Hoagland, assigns the operatives to spy on specific targets by race. The spies report to an ordinary office in an ordinary business building with real estate brokers and doctors. The spies banter and drink together, but there is no real friendship. Park is closest to Jack Kalantzakos, a native Greek of retirement age, who is rumored to have been a CIA agent. Jack appears to like Park, but it is understood that the job always comes first.
Park is as middle-class as any American, but he is also trained from childhood in the machine-cog behaviors of Asian cultures. In Korean life (per the authority of this book, written by Korean-American Chang-Rae Lee), demonstrative family affection is further down the list of important qualities than where Americans place it. Swallowing unexpressed hurts and demonstrating polite ritualized frozen respect are marks of a superior Asian person. Revenge is cold when it is expressed. The best revenge may be primarily through even more intense polite ritual. Since stoicism is also high on the list of proper behavior for Koreans, determined heavily by the necessities of saving face and hierarchical place, many disruptive family difficulties follow when Park marries a white emotionally-demonstrative American 'relief worker', Lelia.
Lelia is a speech therapist, helping the foreign-born to learn English, but in spite of her knowledge of forming communicative words she can't understand some of the invisible fractures of communication between herself and her husband Park. Their son, Mitt, is a shaky bridge between them, an ecstatic little boy of positive energy, good looks and 100% American-trained by mutual agreement. Mitt does get a pass-through education in Korean manners on an occasional basis. (view spoiler)
Lelia makes a tremendous effort to understand Korean culture, but discovers without a common cultural background she has no way to get an explanation for events she sees. I think even if she had been able to understand the cultural nuances, there would still have been shocked horror on both sides.
As a native American, I cannot understand the rigidity of these formal Asian families. I see it, I've read about it, I understand that the shame of breaking taboos can be such that people commit suicide over some kinds of 'loss of face', but it is completely beyond my ability to really 'understand' some of the things defined by 'face'. Americans have rigidities of keeping face, too, just not so many or such strident feelings about it, generally (unless you are a neo-Republican or a Fundamentalist or Tea Party member).
To me, 'face' is a huge waste of time and lives, and a source of endless agony in a world where there already is plenty of that. Of course, traditional Asians, I've read, see us as impulsive, childish, selfish bigots. All of us, whatever race we are, are probably right in some of our general biases and stereotypes, but wrong in the importance of them as contributing factors to any general success or failure.
From where I'm standing, I think despite this book whining on (or whinging -I kinda like the British word whinging) for 350 pages about the pain and disassociation of being a half-whatever racially and culturally, the underlying message is that our genetic, cultural and social baggage is ONLY baggage. In the end, cultural baggage is only overwhelmingly heavy if we pack it too tightly with significance. We can throw out what we don't need, or tailor things to fit better. If we try to carry a weight beyond our abilities or metaphorically wear suits that fit our father's bodies, being emotionally crippled, smothered, and 'missing the boat' is sure to result.
(view spoiler).
Park was working for Glimmer & Company before he met Lilia, benumbed. The job eventually poisons his relationship with Lilia because of its policies for enforced secrecy, but Park felt unable to quit the job. He was making a choice by not making a choice. The birth of his son Mitt temporarily put the job on a back burner as an issue between Lilia and himself, but it comes roaring back later.
For Lilia, the intolerable issues were not Park's Korean race or the traditions of his culture alone, it was Park's inability to communicate his inner life in any language. (view spoiler)
This is a truly a psychologically complex and interesting read. The exploration of the intersection of traditional Korean immigrants who wish to live under SOME American cultural traditions and the more complete assimilation by their American-born children, with the additional difficulties of rejection from white Americans, is easily made into universal themes by the author.
Lee focused the book on Park's initial grasping at American middle-class, educated values - marrying him off to an American white woman, living in a suburban home, going to an American college and having Americanized friendships. Mitt, his beloved and adored son, was being raised completely American, with no traditional rituals between him and his parents. It made it easier for this reader to 'understand' Henry. However, I think that Henry, in doing such evil spying even if he never killed anyone, he certainly was providing bullets for the weapons of others who did not believe in American idealism. Yes, Henry probably was unconsciously paying back America for hurting him. Yes, he was as well slapping away his Korean heritage. Henry having a twisted inner psychology Is well established - but I couldn't quite buy that sensitive and tortured Henry could be this insensitive for the many years he worked as a spy, causing possible assassinations or blackmail, and derailing freedom movements. This kind of hate eats up the person in time. Henry never fell apart that way, nor was he fearful until the end. Eh. It was a minor quibble.
I really liked this book, but it didn't always fit together. Is it a domestic story about a son and his father, interracial marriage and cultural assimilation? Mostly. Was it a political noir? Almost. A case can be made it fit in some elements which damaged the messages Lee wanted to talk about. The thriller inclusions, brief as they were, felt wrong. But I liked it. So perhaps it should be a four star, but I thought it was a genius effort. So there. Five stars. (less)
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Ann
Aug 11, 2011Ann rated it it was ok
There were too many themes that just never connected. I don't know if it was a story of immigrant alienation, political corruption or family tragedy. And the writing was verbose. My mind would wander while he was doing some long description and I would miss a major event like a bombing or a child's death; then have to reread the section to find out what happened. Then the book just ended with no real resolution. Maybe that was the point, that life continues, or as his wise mother said, "Over the mountain, there are more mountains."
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Zöe
Dec 23, 2012Zöe rated it really liked it
Shelves: american, korean
I read Amy Tam and Sour Sweet, I suppose to have more echoes from these Chinese immigrants decedents, but I felt nothing. These authors haven't touched the point in your heart that you will share the same feelings.
However, in this book I could identify myself with him, the protagonist, identify the feeling even with Henry's father. I understand it. I believe that almost every immigrant had those thoughts from time to time. Not only because that my face could pass as a Korean in most of Korean eyes and even in eyes of my people, but also because some of his insights go so deeply into your heart.
Once you are in a place with people, generally speaking, there will be a hierarchy among them. People will automatically divide themselves into groups according to their race, skin colors as well as their intelligences. Even I say I belong to neither of the groups, then I belong to those people whom belonged to none of the group. Then people start to fight, with their minds.
The way he married a white woman, and in this -we-all-familiar-pattern, he is the one who wants his son lives in a singular world, only deal with pure native English, and hoping this could balance the half round Asian face. He is the one who hopes more whiteness of his son. But this is the same. It is all the same for every immigrant stories. The same version. In the melting pot, your language is melting, your way of behaving is melting, but not your race. You still have the Asian look. Maybe the next generation. the next next one.
And he is the spy in a spy novel. There is no all-knowing detective. Nobody knows what's going on. And he himself is also a victim. Being a spy is learn to betray others as if it is just you are breathing air. Do it like a routine. But what about betray your own people. Even he trash them. People could have some strong opinions about their own country, and that is why they choose to leave for another country. But to betray it, and to betray your own father (father figure), this is a hard struggle for him. It's like to see his own son Mitt died. That is his punishment. Mitt finally betrayed his father by dying. (less)
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Michael Finocchiaro
Jul 28, 2021Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it
Shelves: john_dos_passos_prize, pen-hemmingway-award, american-20th-c, fiction, first-novels, korean-american
This was a great book about politics and being Asian in America. I enjoyed the writing, the intrigue and the characters very much. It is not surprising that this was Chang-rae Lee's first huge success. (less)
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Rebecca
Jul 25, 2008Rebecca rated it did not like it
I'm surprised at how uneven this book is--the writing is very inconsistent, and the characterizations are thin and uncompelling. As for the plot, I can only assume that it was written with selling the movie rights in mind? It borders on the ridiculous.
And, it falls into one of my most hated cliches--the dead baby story. The baby died and then I suddenly found myself reevaluating my life. The baby died and then my relationship was on the rocks. The baby died and I almost lost my job. The baby died and my wife cut off all her hair. The baby died and my wife had an affair. Can we muddle through? If any of these felt real or deeply felt in the narrative, it might be convincing, but none of them did. (less)
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Jessica Woodbury
Jun 18, 2018Jessica Woodbury rated it really liked it
Shelves: authors-of-color
I've been meaning to read this book since I was bowled over by ON SUCH A FULL SEA a few years ago. NATIVE SPEAKER is a more traditional literary novel, but a distinctly modern one, with layers upon layers of meaning. It feels like Chang-Rae Lee can do anything.
Henry Park is the child of Korean immigrants, brought up in Queens, immersed in Korean culture but comfortable in his multicultural American world in a way his parents can never be. While I've read books about 2nd-generation immigrants before, I've never seen one dive so very deeply into the questions of identity their situation brings. The ability to be a chameleon, to shift from one culture to another, is both a skill and a kind of betrayal. For Henry it is even more so, his American-ness allows him to work as a kind of spy, fitting in wherever he needs to, making people comfortable with him, and gathering information that will ultimately be used to destroy them. It is even more complicated when Henry's newest target is an up-and-coming city politician who is also a Korean immigrant.
There is much more than that, and this is one of those debut novels where it's hard to believe it's a debut novel. A beautiful, heartbreaking, important read. (less)
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Laura
Nov 30, 2010Laura rated it liked it
not really sure what i think about this book. insightful. The protagonist, Henry Park - and Chang-rae Lee himself - had a much different experience growing up as a Korean-American than I did.
Interesting how that is. i: no real ties to my Korean heritage, raised by altogether American parents (some lingering Polish influence at best) mainly in American suburbia (what seems to be the life-suck of immigrant culture). Lee/Park: infinite ties to his heritage, raised by Korean parents in a city where Korean culture lives on in that funny American way... the way I love -- in pieces, slightly tattered, but that much more alive, rooted, proud, lucid, something you can grab onto and let slip away in the same moment -- how can you not love something with so much at stake?
Lee reveals himself frankly in this book, uncomfortably at times, when you're unsure you want to know, that you want to be layered down with that.
In a word, the book is forlorn. In a character, it is Eeyore. Park has lost his poor tail, so caught between two worlds - two cultures, separated by things much deeper than the Pacific - and then surrounded by grief - originating from his father, his son, his wife, his job. Yeah, that can get to be a little much. You never feel that Park has really reconciled himself to his surroundings, but maybe that's the point. Maybe issues like that - issues of identity (who are you?) and belonging (who loves you?) and tradition (what are you?) and necessary change (who do you want to be?) - are never resolved. they just are there, reminding us of our humanity. Lovely. (less)
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robin friedman
Apr 08, 2020robin friedman rated it really liked it
A Novel Of Immigrant Experience
Chang-Rae Lee wrote his first novel, "Native Speaker", which describes the experience of a young Korean man in New York City at the age of 28. The protagonist, Henry Park, is the son of immigrants. His mother died while Henry was young and Henry's father has risen to wealth through difficult work in the ownership of small groceries in the poorer sections of New York City. The family is Christian but of a Confucian background. Henry throughout has much more difficulty expressing emotions and feelings than most Westerners. Henry marries a well-to-do and beautiful white woman, Leila. They have a son, Mitt, who tragically dies. Henry and Leila have difficulty in their marriage arising from, among other things, different cultural expectations, Henry's job, and the death of their son.
Henry, the prototypical outsider, works as a spy for a private investigative agency whose clients or missions are never fully defined in the novel. Henry seems to get over-involved with the people whose lives he infiltrates. He became close to a Phillipino psychiatrist who offered Henry, through friendship and therapy, insights into Henry's life. But most of the novel involves Henry's relationship with another individual on whom he spies: a Korean New York City politician named John Kwang who has aspirations to run for mayor.
The book describes the life of Korean immigrants and the difficult culture shock of living in a new land. Lee also describes well the vibrant and continuously varied life of New York City, with its diversity, as seen by his protagonist. I thought the overriding metaphor of the book, the immigrant as outsider and spy, was pat and unconvincing. It was too derivative of Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" and Lee never convincingly explains how Henry becomes a spy or why his experience as a spy should, somehow, be regarded as representative of the Korean immigrant experience. The book includes some lovely lyrically written passages, some perceptive scenes (those involving the psychiatrist, for example) and some chilling scenes of the modus operandi of the spying operation. But much of this novel is padded and written in a routine prose. I frequently grew impatient with it.
The book aptly describes the travails of immigrants new to the United States, particularly those from Korea. But the immigrant experience has, in general, been described more convincingly in many other novels. In some ways the book seemed to me a not fully successful amalgamation of Ellison's "Invisible Man" as it described the African-American experience and Henry Roth's "Call it Sleep" as it lyrically described the early Jewish immigrant experience through the eyes of a young boy.
Henry Park has a torn, ambivalent attitude towards the United States based upon the difficulties of his life. What stayed with me in the book was the speaker's love for this country, frequently expressed lyrically. For example:
"Americans, one of them would say, are a wonderful and exuberant people. They dance, they play-fight, they puff up their lips and blow out their chests. they enjoy using their hands. They seem to live always at a football match".
"Still I love it here. I love these streets lined with big American sedans and livery cars and vans. I love the early morning storefronts opening up one by one, shopkeepers talking as they crank their awnings down. ... I follow the strolling Saturday families of brightly wrapped Hindus and then the black-clad Hasidim, and step into all the old churches that were once German and then Korean and are now Vietnamese. And I love the brief Queens sunlight at the end of the day, the warm lamp always reaching though the westward tops of that magnificent city."
"Native Speaker" is a good book. It takes a hard look at the difficulties young Asians may face in the United States. The most moving and compelling part of the story remains, for me, the hope and love it expresses for our country and its promise.
Robin Friedman (less)
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Alex Timberman
Jan 07, 2014Alex Timberman rated it it was amazing
Shelves: asian-literature
What a fine book. Native Speaker won the Hemmingway award for being the best first novel of a writer. The author is Chang-rae Lee who is the creative writing professor at Princeton University. He immigrated when he was young to live in the United States.
I had my doubts that he could really identify with the Korean immigrant experience, since I too immigrated at an early age, but never really felt like I was on the outside looking in on American culture. I’m not sure if he did as well but the book definitely echoes those sentiments.
It is a book about loss, alienation, and ambition. It is also an ode to the diversity of America and the immigrant experience. And the author touched all these humanist experiences in the guise of a spy story.
An excellent book, Chang-rae Lee has his way with words. It is a pleasure to read, very professional, and interesting throughout. Recommended for savory reading.
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Amy
Feb 25, 2016Amy rated it really liked it
A challenging look at race, self-identity, assimilation (or the lack thereof) and being stuck in the interstices. Lee writes lovely prose (maybe just a wee melodramatic/bogs down at times) but a fast read despite its emotional heft. He doesn't shy away from the awkwardly painful/un-pc -- although really, the wife is a bit....eh?? sometimes. I mean, who would EVER refer to their husband as "yellow peril: neo-American"???? (less)
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Judy
Mar 16, 2010Judy rated it it was amazing
Recommends it for: Lovers of good fiction.
Shelves: 20th-century-fiction
This novel is amazing! I don't know how I could have missed it for almost 15 years. The author is Korean born, raised and educated in the United States (Yale, MFA from University of Oregon, now teaches at Princeton.)
Henry Park, the main character, was raised in New York City by Korean immigrants, so as is usual in first novels, there is some autobiographical influence here. Henry's father, who had been an electrical engineer in Korea, built up a successful chain of small grocery stores in the city and eventually moved his family to the suburbs. When the story opens, Henry is working as a spy for a private espionage company and is married to a white American woman. They have lost a child, their marriage is crumbling and Henry has recently survived a disastrous assignment at his company. In other words, his carefully created life is in shambles. Henry is a very careful man in most respects though he has a penchant for danger.
This is not ordinary story about the strain of a lost child on a marriage however. Nor is it a second generation immigrant tale nor a spy thriller, though it is all of those things. It is the weaving of these three narrative threads, as well as Lee's corruscating style that places the novel way above the norm. Aside from probably being ahead of his time, the novel could have won a Pulitzer Prize, because it is a quintessential American story for the 21st century in the way that Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is.
I was infatuated on every page, wanting to read as fast as I could but lingering to savor sentences. Henry Park has a plethora of issues which center in an inability to express his inner feelings in spoken language, an understandable weakness for a person raised between two languages and two almost opposing cultures. His wife Lelia, another stunningly created character, is a speech therapist who is defeated by her own husband's speaking deficiencies.
Presumably Chang-rae Lee is intimately familiar with his protagonist's troubles. Happily for us readers, he has overcome them, at least as a writer. Rarely does a novel so fully insert me into the lives of its characters. Every time I open a new book, I hope for this type of reading experience and in Native Speaker I got it. (less)
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Mark
Jan 14, 2014Mark rated it really liked it
Shelves: fiction, immigrants
Henry Park is a man of secrets. Part of it is his Korean inheritance, assimilating with American culture in an almost seamless way, marrying an American wife. And part of it is the fact that he is a spy.
It's a freelance operation that he is part of, doing covert jobs for any number of clients, and that work has contributed to a growing sense that Henry is losing his way. He and his wife are separated, torn apart by the accidental death of their young son. But Henry's work and his almost pathological hiding have played their part as well.
During his personal crisis, Henry has become too emotionally involved with one target, a Filipino psychiatrist, and now he is being put to the test by his enigmatic, dangerous boss, who has asked him to infiltrate the budding mayoral campaign of a New York City councilman, John Kwang.
Along the way, Henry works to get back together with his wife Lelia, to come to terms with his complicated feelings about his birth family, and to balance his admiration for Kwang with the job he has been asked to do.
While there are some dramatic plot developments along the way, as Kwang faces increasing opposition despite his charismatic rise, the real purpose of Native Speaker seems more atmospheric and philosophical.
Lee is a skilled writer and is expert at dealing with the nuances of inheritance, assimilation, difference and characterization. But for my taste, there were a few too many atmospherics in this novel, particularly in Henry's relationship with his wife. For much of the book, I was never quite sure why they were on the outs and what it would take to get them back together.
Still, Lee is such a good writer and is so erudite in the ways of life and people, this is well worth the read. (less)
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Jared Della Rocca
Nov 12, 2014Jared Della Rocca rated it it was ok
Shelves: student-recommendations, family-dynamics, slow, 2014
Native Speaker utilizes a spy novel to explore the issues immigrants face in America. But in trying to cross genres, it ended up feeling a little flat. The "spy" portion (which I'm being overly generous using that term) was never quite defined. Henry Park's company does corporate espionage, for lack of a better term, but the company is broad-brushed and his co-workers tend to be vaporous. The structure wasn't clear, and the references to his last assignment, which was partially viewed as a failure, is leaked in drips and drabs throughout the novel, so you never feel like you have a clear hold. By making it so amorphous, you lose about 50% of the novel.
In the other part of the novel, the immigrant experience, Lee utilizes Park's current assignment as well as his relationship with his wife and memories of his childhood. To clarify "immigrant experience", Park was born in America and is a first-generation citizen. He was raised in a Korean household, though, and feels set apart from both cultures. I clarify the point because immigrant experience tends to call up images of adult immigrants, as opposed to natural born citizens. But Lee's point appears to be that Koreans are quiet, internalize emotions, and thus make tough spouses. But in reaching those conclusions, I kept asking myself, "Am I being racist, or is that really the point he's making?" I just never felt comfortable with the stereotype he appeared to be creating.
So, overall, a whiff on this book. There are better spy novels and better immigrant experience novels. I wouldn't waste time grabbing this one. (less)
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Katie
Jan 06, 2014Katie rated it it was amazing
So fortuitous that I read this now. It's timely. It's such an incredible feeling to read the right book at the right time.
There were plot points that I felt didn't deserve five stars. The writing definitely does, and this was a case where the end of the book redeemed the weakness of any earlier plot lines I felt dissatisfied with earlier. The book definitely gets stronger and more compelling as you continue reading. In any case, despite its few weaknesses, it was the first thing I've finished this year that I wanted to sit down and rate 5 stars. (less)
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Jade Keller
Sep 02, 2011Jade Keller rated it really liked it
If you've heard me talk about Chang-rae Lee's book, "The Surrendered," you'll know I'm simply enamored of his work. "Native Speaker" is his debut novel and I was excited to read it because it deals with the immigrant experience: about being American, but nevertheless a perpetual outsider, from two worlds and belonging to neither. It's the story of a Korean-American, whose marriage with his white wife is on shaky ground, while his career leads him into dangerous paths that force him to choose loyalties between the America he longs for and the Korea in his blood.
In terms of navigating a world of conflicted identity, this book speaks more cogently than any other I have read. Lee's writing is, as ever, beautiful and haunting, with wonderful lines like: "Sometimes you have to meet the parents to figure out what someone really looks like" and "I want to call the simple Korean back to him the way I once could when I was Peter's age, our comely language of distance and bows, by which real secrets may be slowly courted, slowly unveiled." I have a tendency to highlight beautifully written sentences and my copy of this book is covered in the marks of my pen.
While it doesn't quite sink right into your gut and marrow the way "The Surrendered" does - which, I think, shows the trajectory of his growth as an author - "Native Speaker" is a good read to take slowly, in quiet moments. For anyone who too has felt themselves caught in the doorway, able to see both sides, but not quite enter, I think this book will resonate with you. (less)
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Catherine
Jan 24, 2010Catherine rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2010, korea, bipoc_us, 50books_bipoc2010
Though I couldn't have predicted it from the first couple of chapters, this book ended up captivating me. I found it hard to settle into the prose - the beginning of the book seemed a little far-fetched (moles for hire? really?), and I wanted more details about the overarching losses that so clearly framed the protagonist's life.
And yet - the moment the author begins to dip into the protagonist's past; the moment the book begins to consider family, tradition, immigration, belonging; the moment his work becomes clearer and the ways in which his corporation uses him and is used - then it's hard to put down.
There's so much to contemplate about race in this book, about relationships between African Americans and Koreans in New York, about the fortunes of recent immigrants, about language and meaning. We see the Civil Rights movement from the outside in - a non-white person who can pass as white, but who has so much in common with the people he sees marching - and, thrown into the heart of a modern political campaign, we're forced to consider where Civil Rights has taken us, where it still needs to go, its failings, its hope.
I loved the resolution of the many fraught, complex storylines in the book, of the awkward healing and the fact that no character is wholly good or bad, but all are shaped by history and culture, recent and years' past. I suspect this story will be on my mind for days to com - what a wonderful gift. (less)
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Alison
Nov 13, 2011Alison rated it really liked it
I liked this book much better on my second reading, twelve years later. The writing is uneven at times (especially in dialogue–which is so funny, given the themes, that at times it’s hard to tell if it’s actually a deliberate technique) (and at the beginning too–but lots of writers can’t write a good beginning)–but it’s a first novel, so. Most people, I think, read it as a personal-experience immigrant story, or the story of an unraveling marriage, and of course it is; it’s even a good immigrant story (and as an immigrant myself, I found it harrowing, in a good way). But I think the more interesting reading is to read it as a self-critiquing noir, because it’s a GREAT noir. To use the noirish narrative of the spy who’s alienated from his own identity, creating a new one to try to win somebody over–and matching that with the immigrant narrative, to ask in what ways immigrants are forced to become spies and impostors within the infiltrated culture as well as in their personal lives…. That’s great classic noir material, and the logical consequences of these investigations–which is to say, the surprises–keep piling on till very nearly the end of the book.
http://alisonkinney.com/2015/07/26/ch...
Thanks! (less)
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Andrew
Jan 27, 2012Andrew added it
Shelves: american-fiction, 90s-american-fiction
We live in an era where "ethnic" American writers are supposed to go over a few talking points: establishing their own identity, coping with the pressures of an immigrant family, and a celebration of the multiethnic, democratic America.
In Native Speaker, the protagonist radically fails to establish his own identity, despises his father but realizes that his worldview is still shaped by these nightmarish, arbitrary Confucian doctrines, and the multiethnic, democratic America is chaotic and corrupt. And for this I give Chang-Rae Lee kudos. Instead of an embarrassing family drama that uses an immigrant culture as fancy set dressing, he attacks the immigrant experience head on.
The plot is fairly simple. Henry Park, second-generation Korean-American, works as a spy, and begins to spy on a powerful Korean-American mayoral candidate in New York. The author places the reader firmly in Park's mindset, as he looks upon the tableau of modern New York (this is the New York of Spike Lee, not Woody Allen) through a lens of deep and profound alienation. Which, in our present era of American fiction, is a breath of fresh air. (less)
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Carmen
Apr 25, 2009Carmen rated it it was ok
Shelves: education
The stiff manner of dialogue in this book really turned me off from the start, nothing seemed to have a heartbeat. I was expecting to enjoy this story about an outsider looking in, trying to find home, but it came off as completely dry and humorless. The story lacks momentum and the narrator has very little charm, he just seems self-pitying and morose throughout. Strangely enough, I respected his parents and kind of wished they wrote the book, particularly his mom who was constantly dropping pearls of wisdom. I feel bad giving a negative review but, of course, there are plenty of people who love this book, maybe I'm just missing something.. (less)
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Alix
Oct 24, 2021Alix added it
I reread this because I was attending a Lit Quake event featuring the author, and I had not read his debut novel in so long that I barely remembered it. On this reading I came to the conclusion that it was rightly celebrated. It's a very nuanced, fresh treatment of the topic of Asian American identity and so much more (grief, loyalty, love, vulnerability). Well worth a read. (less)
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Patrick McCoy
Sep 20, 2011Patrick McCoy rated it really liked it
Shelves: contemporary-fiction
A friend recommended Native Speaker by Korean American writer Chang Rae Lee, so I picked it up in a used book store and forgot about it. Then when I read Gary Shyteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, he thanked Chang Rae Lee for helping him become a novelist and that reminded me of the book on my shelf, so I picked it up read it.
Both Shytengart and Lee have written New York novels about identity in what is probably the most cosmopolitan city in the world. Both novelists are also mainly concerned with identity-what is an American, why is it important to keep a connection to one's parent's culture.
Lee has written an intense novel about the would-be assimilation of a Korean American who still doesn’t feel as if he belongs. This is mostly due to the personal tragedy of the death of his young son that does little to give him a foothold, nor does his job as a corporate spy help him understand who he truly is.
These things make him more of “an invisible man” than give him little sense of self-identity. I was totally drawn into the world of Henry Park and felt like a tourist in his life living in New York and learning how his Korean heritage effects him and view of the world.
It is unsurprising similar to the Japanese worldview that is inspired by Confucian thinking with a focus on the family, sacrifice, and respecting elders. I was surprised by how much I liked this novel and was drawn into the world created by Lee. (less)
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Julia
Apr 12, 2008Julia rated it really liked it
Shelves: novels
So all during my cross-country tour for grad school interviews, this book I borrowed from Lauren was waiting for me in my suitcase. I kept reading other things..."Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," "No Reservations," and InStyle magazine, mainly. Quick airport reads.
I'm really glad I finally committed myself to reading this. I was off to a slow start, but as the book progresses, the language becomes ever more deliberate and ever more beautiful. I've read a lot of contemporary fiction about the immigrant/child of immigrant experience (such as Indian-Americans Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, etc., which are exquisitely wonderful in their own right), but I don't know much about Korean culture (right, culture CAPITAL C and all that, too long to go into in a goodreads review),
so a Korean-American experience, not to mention a male Korean-American experience in particular, was really an interesting one to feel I was gaining insight into.
In some ways, Lee's writing reminds me of Marilynne Robinson's. All of sudden, you realize that a page and a half ago you've been smacked between the eyes with a heartbreakingly beautiful insight, rendered into concise yet poetic language. Count me as a big fan. Four starts instead of five only because it took me (and possibly entirely due to my own halted reading pace) a while to realize all that this book had to offer. (less)
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