Abstract
Abstract:In Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life, the fragmented and atemporal narrative creates a novel in which much of what is communicated remains unwritten, woven instead into a narrative structure that mirrors the symptoms of the traumatized psyche and challenges readers to bear witness. As an example of trauma fiction, A Gesture Life exposes the roots of trauma in personal circumstances and as a social phenomenon, and sheds light on trauma’s roots in various forms of racism. Taking up David Eng and Shinhee Han’s “A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,” this essay investigates why so many “minority” texts invoke trauma as their organizing frameworks and illustrates the importance of Lee’s novel in offering a valuable counter-narrative to official versions of history and to narratives of successful assimilation of diasporic subjects.
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