Native Speaker

Native Speaker explores the intersectionalities of identity and multiculturalism. Henry Park is an embodiment of these intersectionalities. He is both Korean and American and is often torn between two false worlds. These worlds are false because they are a projection of capitalistic American ideals of assimilation, but it is up to Henry to understand that his existence can be individual and free of these fallacies.

Henry is raised by a Korean father who actively and successfully pursues financial freedom but is otherwise unassimilated to American culture. His father brings in an unnamed and unknowable Korean woman to take care of Henry and look after the house when Henry’s mother dies, indicative of his father’s Korean values of stability in the home life and the need for the domestic touch of a woman. The presence of this woman is one of the key cultural differences between Henry and his white American wife Lelia. Lelia thinks it unfathomable that Henry doesn’t know anything about a woman who helped to raise him, but for Henry such an event is normal, part of the fabric of Korean immigrant life, a piece to his family’s survival. While Henry is raised by his Korean father, he is also brought up by American institutions. He internalizes racist ideas of Asian Americans and struggles to develop an identity free of racist ideas.

Henry is constantly asked to attest for Asians. He is lumped into a large group and therefore dehumanized; he often meets people who do not consider that his experiences are unique to him and his family alone, or that Korean culture is different from Chinese or Japanese culture. This dehumanization chips away at Henry and makes him ashamed of not being white. He projects these anxieties onto his half-white son Mitt, whom Henry secretly wishes were more like Lelia than like Henry. He wants Mitt to live a life full of white possibility. As a child, Mitt meets white children who call him racist slurs. Though these children eventually become friends with Mitt, their casual and rapid ability to cling to racist ideas reveals that American children learn racism at an early age. Lee warns his reader that despite America’s long-standing reputation as a land of immigrants, there is little room for multiculturalism.

This criticism is heightened through the figure of John Kwang. Kwang is a Korean immigrant but has adapted to American life so well that he moves swiftly through ladders of political power. The idea that he could successfully run for mayor of New York City is exciting because it indicates that New Yorkers, who live in the most diverse city in America, are ready for an Asian political leader. Kwang is seen as a potential solution to race problems. As a Korean, he is white enough for white voters, and ethnic enough for minority voters. The scandals that surround and destroy Kwang reveal that the picture of Kwang as mayor is yet another fallacy. In reality, people are not ready for an Asian mayor. It turns out that the white community can quickly dismiss Kwang’s shadier business dealings as indicative of a third-world mentality, and Kwang's proximity to whiteness alienates him from Black and Latino voters. Though white politicians often revive their careers after scandal, Kwang's scandals effectively end his career and erase any good he did for Queens. Kwang is flawed, but Lee points to American society as one of the reasons for Kwang’s flaws. In trying to be multicultural and accessible, Kwang dooms himself.