Diaspora, criminal suspicion, and the Asian American: reading Native Speaker and A Person of Interest from across the Pacific

Abstract

This essay attempts to practice an Asia-based critical reading of Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Susan Choi's A Person of Interest. Lee's protagonist Henry Park is a second-generation Korean American coached to be ‘unapparent and flat’ as part of his role as ethnic spy, while Choi's Professor Lee is a ‘person of interest’ to the FBI as a suspect for the Brain Bomber. Affectless and generic, Park and Professor Lee at once embody the stereotype of poker-faced, emotionally flat Asians, and then find themselves accused of an ‘un-American’ lack of expressiveness that leads to social immiscibility and even potential criminality. Both texts play with the idea of Asian Americans as ‘alien,’ not only figuratively so but interpellated into roles of espionage or possible terrorism, and consider how Asian American subjectivity is linked to diasporic origin. In reading these works within a transpacific context, I discuss the significance of a ‘native speaker’ within a contemporary Korean context and read the Korean language punning behind Lee's novel. In Choi's novel, I consider the significance of the author's refusal to identity her protagonist's Asian country of origin, as well as her imputed linkage between Japan and terrorism.