Native Speaker
The first two chapters of “Native Speaker” introduce the main character and his life as a Korean American. In our readings from Takaki on Korean Americans, Japan tried to overthrow Korea in the 1950’s and a flow of Koreans were immigrating to the United States thinking there were better opportunities. As skilled workers in the technology field and medical field, for Koreans coming to America was not so promising afterwards. Eventually enough Koreans immigrated to the United States setting up a “Korea town” with super markets, restaurants, hospitals, and factories much like the Chinese and Japanese immigrants had.
In the first few chapters of Takaki, an interesting quote stood out, “I should have warned my American wife”. Obviously this shows us that our narrator was Korean and met and married an American woman, later realizing he should have cautioned her about his field of work. What could be so bad about his life that he in the end regretted not telling his wife? Henry, the narrator, spoke little of his profession other than that he worked with illegal immigrants. Most likely, he found them and took them out of the country. In the letter Lelia gave him after she left the country, she wrote towards the bottom “hypocrite, spy”. Henry most likely takes Koreans out of the countries that do not belong. But how can he do this when he himself is Korean? And probably was or once was an illegal alien? Something about Henry’s past was so critical, that it led his wife to leave him.
The second chapter opens up with how Henry met his wife Lelia. It was interesting how the end of their marriage was the beginning, later following the beginning. Henry and Lelia met and clicked right away. Lelia’s beautiful speech was what seemed to draw him in, hence the name “Native Speaker”. One interesting quote was when Henry kisses Lelia and asks “Have you ever kissed a Korean before”. He seemed so aware of their differences, pointing them out in an awkward way. Lelia seemed to think nothing of it responding “No, I guess not”. The obvious intermarriage in this book, so far seems to have a lot to do with their separation. Henry was Korean, acting as a hypocrite sending immigrants out of the state when he has no more of a right than the immigrants do. This possibly could have been the end of their marriage.
I enjoyed reading the first two chapters of this book because there is no confusion of what is “real or fake”. All of the facts are put out on the table and pretty easy to understand. Henry seems like a strong person with an interesting secret that we will shortly find out as the story moves along.
martink852 said,
March 27, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I really want to keep reading to get into what Henry really does for a living. It seems so suspicious in a way which i feel really draws the reader in! I also thought that the scene where Henry asks Lelia if she ever kissed a korean before was significant because it shows that there is some kind of boundary that seperates lelia and henry. This is the first novel that we’ve read that has an interratial marriage and i’m anxious so see what turns out of it. the looks of it so far doesnt look like lelia cares too much!