Speakers and Sleepers: Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker, Whitman, and the Performance of Americanness

Focusing on Chang-rae Lee 1995 “post-ethnic” classic Native Speaker, this article dwells on the novel’s “legend” theme to suggest that Lee’s book itself is a legend twice: first, because it furnishes the “legible” appearance, the story in which Lee comes before his readers, and second, because this story itself appears, is seen, and lends itself to reading (is made legible) via a legend in the etymological sense of the word. Embedded in the novel, this “key” warrants a certain reading of the book. Further, Moraru offers that the key is fundamentally Whitmanesque and by the same token central to Lee’s engagement with America’s tradition and culture. According to the critic, Whitman, the “legendary” native precursor, helps Lee lay his own claim to American writer status; Korean-born Lee becomes a “natural,” naturalizes himself into America and its letters via the emblematically American, Whitman intertext lodged inside his novel.