So good old John Kwang dug himself a grave. Change-Rae Lee should just be the new Miss Cleo, exploting the idea that our government officals are involved with prositutes…scandalous! Also the idea that Kwang was giving money to illegal immigrants, just like Spitzer wanted to give immigrants licenses…strange! Anyways, I’m not sure how I feel about this book. I know I state this opinion in every post but seriously, I just couldn’t get into it. I did enjoy reading about his experiences with his family but not his whole work thing. It just got so repetive and not needed at points.
At the end, when Kwang is missing, May, his wife, fears he may have taken his own life. Henry says, “But I told her she was wrong. I know he is alive. Koreans don’t take their own lives. At least not from shame” (pgs. 332-333). I thought this was interesting because at one point, Henry’s dad says that Koreans are made up of pride and shame. This may relate back to the tales of Takaki and how the Koreans were overtaken by the Japanese and how they may have felt that shame as to not being able to hold their own grounds. They were used to feeling “shame” as people and as a country. So used to it that it never affected them like it would any other person. I feel that Change-Rae Lee relates themes amongst his family and his work; as though they are connected as one.
The last part of the book, “calling all the difficult names of who we are” (pg. 349) is a great ending to this book. To me, the “difficult names” are all the different people that have been apart of Henry’s life. All of them, non-white people, were different. Kwang changed his name once arriving in NYC and I’m pretty positive Henry’s name isn’t his “real” name. To sum it up, everyone’s name tells a story of who they are; all are unique, regardless of their pronunciation.
I agree with your summarization of the ending that Lee wrote for us. I think it was fitting that the story took place in NYC, one of the most condensed area of differences, (racially, ethnically, and religiously) – in the world. I thought it was quite profound how Henry’s previous obsession with speaking changed by the end of the book to a sense of appreciation of the lives driven by hope that surrounded him on every street corner. He realized that the attempted English from the new immigrants was really representative of their attempts at adapting to a new life for themselves. I too made the blantant connections to our ex-governor in comparison to the fallen Kwang. We can only hope that in the next few weeks we do not uncover a story about Spitzer hiring someone to kill a spy that worked in his office building.