Review of Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee

*Native Speaker* by Chang-rae Lee (1996). Published by Riverhead.

There are some books that it feels like I’ve procrastinated on reading for an eternity, but in actuality it’s only been like three or four years since buying a physical copy that I finally felt inclined to go up and pick the book to read.

Many years ago I found a copy of Native Speaker in my local Savers, bought it for $3 because at the time I had told myself I wanted to read more Asian and Asian diaspora authors, then added it to my bookshelf.

While I did end up reading a ton more Asian and diaspora writers (this blog truly is a testament to that), it took me until our trip to Florida, where I knew we would be roasting in the beach for hours in the sun, to read this one.

I started it on the flight to Florida, and had finished it by the time we even landed. I will say upfront: I found this one to be quite the painful read. I could not get into it all, but I continued through it because I thought that I needed to recoup the time investment that I had already put into it. It’s not bad per say, but it’s not within my taste.

Let’s get into the review!

Henry Park has spent his life trying to become an American, putting him in a dilemma as time goes on.

The protagonist of this novel is Henry Park, who is second generation Korean American with some major identity, which becomes more obvious as you keep reading through this book. He doesn’t really have a relationship with his father or mother, and when he ends up getting separated from his wife, and by extension his son, his depression increases as well.

It doesn’t help that his work is to spy on a private business, and a lot of what they do is deceiving people in order to get information to their clients.

This serves as a mirror for many of the conflicts that Henry himself faces, as he’s deceiving himself throughout the course of the novel. He doesn’t really feel American or Korean, and with his increasing mental health issues and problems in his life, this is only getting worse.

His work is also getting dirtier as clients can die from the work they do, and when his boss decides to assign everyone to pick targets politically based on race, it exacerbates this issues.

His former wife is Leila, an America who works with those born abroad to perfect their English. They have a son, Mitt, who is the perfect epitome of the American life and what it means to be an American, but this doesn’t save him when he ends up getting crushed to death in a pile of white boys, which is such a heavy handed metaphor of what it means to be Asian American, or of Asian descents, at the time Lee is writing this.

Then there’s another element with Henry’s family. He has a strained relationship with his father, and there’s an entire sequence where he describes the Korean maid he hires in order to get them closer to the culture and place they left behind.

It turns dark towards the end of Henry’s recollection of that period of his life, but there’s major tension involved between what it means to be first and second generation in the novel, and Henry’s problems are majorly sourced from those kinds of tensions.

My take here is that the novel tries to do too much, as there are many different themes and narratives that aren’t really tied together neatly. There’s the element of political sabotage going on with Henry’s job, the cultural assimilation, and then the struggles he faces with his own family.

These feel like three separate novels crammed into one, and while the writing itself is pretty good, it just didn’t work for me as a reader.

Overall Thoughts

This review comes across as a bit negative, but I’m sure there’s a reader for this book out there. Taste is so subjective, and while I may not like it, this definitely is someone’s favorite book out there.

There are quite a few discussions about the questions this novel raises with the kind of assimilation and in-between feelings the protagonist is facing, and they have their merits. Let’s keep these conversations going, even if there are almost thirty years passing now between this book’s publication.

I’m glad I read it, but I won’t think I reread it again.

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