Native Speaker

hang-rae Lee exposes the inner and outer conflicts the immigrants go through in the United States with his novels. Immigrants or first generation immigrants are under oppression to assimilate into American society and culture. Isolation follows to whom fails to participate in assimilation to the society due to the language barrier or cultural differences. Therefore, immigrants fall into confusion between their original culture and adapted culture that they suffer an identity crisis. In Chang-rae Lee’s first novel, Native Speaker, the protagonist, Henry Park, tells the story as a first-person narrator with flashbacks. Henry Park is a first generation Korean-American who is an industrial spy for a strange company with unknown clients. The company specializes in gathering information on

Also, the company assigns Henry to gather information of John Kwang by joining his pre-campaign team. John Kwang is a Korean American politician who is running for a mayor of New York. Carrying out his duty, Henry starts questioning about himself and his job as a spy after he finds out that he has an affinity for Kwang as a Korean-American. Henry quits his job after he sees the fall of Kwang and rebuilds his relationship with Lelia. Lee’s second book, A Gesture Life, is told by the first person narrator Franklin Hata or Doc Hata. The story begins with Hata’s current status in a small town called Bedley Run. Hata is an Asian-American who originally comes from Korea but was adopted by a Japanese childless couple. Hata is respected by townspeople as a retired elder who used to run a medical shop. Hata has an adopted daughter from Korea named Sunny. Nevertheless, Hata and Sunny has difficulties in their father and daughter relationship throughout the book. When Hata accidentally sets house on fire, Hata finds an opportunity to go over his memories and his true self. Hata tells his story through