Native Speaker

Native Speaker explores the intersectionalities of identity and multiculturalism. Henry Park is an embodiment of these intersectionalities. He is both Korean and American and is often torn between two false worlds. These worlds are false because they are a projection of capitalistic American ideals of assimilation, but it is up to Henry to understand that his existence can be individual and free of these fallacies.

Henry is raised by a Korean father who actively and successfully pursues financial freedom but is otherwise unassimilated to American culture. His father brings in an unnamed and unknowable Korean woman to take care of Henry and look after the house when Henry’s mother dies, indicative of his father’s Korean values of stability in the home life and the need for the domestic touch of a woman. The presence of this woman is one of the key cultural differences between Henry and his white American wife Lelia. Lelia thinks it unfathomable that Henry doesn’t know anything about a woman who helped to raise him, but for Henry such an event is normal, part of the fabric of Korean immigrant life, a piece to his family’s survival. While Henry is raised by his Korean father, he is also brought up by American institutions.