Transcending Ethnicity: Diasporicity in A Gesture Life

This essay concentrates on the protagonist’s diasporic image in Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life. Hata is forced to go back to his wanderer’s life, at the moment when he seems to have achieved the very assimilation he has worked for so carefully all his life, sacrificing everything else. Defying the old and seeking the unknown, he takes on the diasporic image of a spiritual exile. Using the specific ethnic status of an Asian American, the author makes the novel transcend the constraints of immigrant literature. Asian American status thus becomes a signifier of his diasporicity.