Native Speaker

The Ggeh as a Symbol for Henry’s Character in Native Speaker The Immigration Act of 1924, considered a milestone in American history, completely eliminated immigration of Asians into the United States of America. According to the U.S. Department of State, the paramount purpose of this act was “to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity.”1 Americans were determined to shape the identity of those living within the country’s borders into an “ideal American society.” However in 1965, a new Immigration and Neutralization policy was signed, abolishing the previous restrictions on immigration and attracting new skilled laborers into the United States.2 1965 marked a paradigm shift within the minds of Americans from painting a picture using…

The novel Native Speaker explores both the internal conflicts and the external conflicts of immigrants living in America and gives the readers insight about the struggle of finding self-identity between two cultures. In Native Speaker, Chang Rae Lee argues that most immigrants, especially Asians, tend to camouflage themselves when in public—for example, by being silent around others—because they are afraid to receive negative feedbacks judgements from others. At the beginning of the novel,…

Are you a banana? Am I a banana? Can anyone be a banana? I wouldn’t consider myself to be a true banana, but I can still connect with other bananas. Eric Liu explains his personal opinion of what being a “banana” (Liu 101) means to him in his memoir, “Notes of a Native Speaker”. Liu’s thesis, in my opinion, was written as a revised quote previously foresaid by William Shakespeare. It read, “Some are born white, others achieve whiteness, still others have whiteness thrust upon them” (Liu 101).…

This practice of identity formation is explained intimately by Liu, in Notes of a Native Speaker, in which he shares his experience as an Asian-American assimilating to American culture. In his narrative he explains how his parents were not "typical" Chinese parents who adhered to cultural practices of being "pushy, status-obsessed, rigid, disciplined, or prepared." (Liu p.2) His parents instead decided that their children should "mix and match, as they saw fit, whatever aspects of whatever…

Kate McCarter is ecstatic as she describes the organization she and her brother, Jack, have launched. She apologizes for her passionate, rapid-fire speech, but her excitement is understandable; she and Jack worked hard to establish a new method of language learning for Northwestern students. The club, Campus Language Connection, is the McCarter’s second foray into creating a language organization. This new group joins native speakers of a language with those who hope to learn that language. CLC…

Their English is the most proficient out of all the other ELL learners that I have encountered. Having lived in the United States for the past two years I assumed that they had enough times to practice their English to almost the same level as a native speaker. I learned English since I was 2 as my father spoke it to me and I had a British tutor. I started picking up American English when I was seven when I attended school here. Young Learners tend to pick up language faster and more efficiently…

Racial integration has been a task that America has not yet solved completely. Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker gives an insightful depiction of this prevailing racial dispute. The novel uses first generation, as he was born on an airplane, Korean immigrant Henry Park’s life story to illustrate the existing issue. Henry is ordered to spy on a Korean immigrant politician, John Kwang. The incidents that happen in Kwang’s election camp mirror the racial conflict and possible harmony of different…

Native Speaker, by Chang-Rae Lee, is a captivating novel which touches upon issues such as race, loyalty, assimilation, immigration, politics, interracial marriage, and identity. Lelia describes Henry as: “illegal alien/ emotional alien” (Lee 5) because he does not show emotions the way she expects him to. It is interesting that she uses the term alien to describe his emotional states, as it shows how insensitive he can appear. Perhaps, that is one of the things that made his relationship with…

Language is a tool we use to create the life we desire. Living in the United States means having to speak English. Glenn Davis, in Speaking English Right, says “English speakers in the United States earn more money than non-English speakers.” As in today companies are looking for people with good social security numbers and as we know most Mexicans that weren’t born in the United States don’t have social security numbers. My aunt was born in Mexico in a small town call Ixcatiopan. Coming to …

In his novel Native Speaker, Chang-rae Lee argues that the learning English in and of itself is a method of cultural assimilation forced on immigrants and their families in the United States. This argument can be seen through the words and thoughts of Lee’s narrator. “‘The polls say people are against bilingualism,’ I said. ‘They’re against giving anything more to immigrants’” (37). Henry Park, the first-person narrator, says this in the present day to his coworker at the spy agency while…