About this title: As his marriage unravels, Henry Park, a second-generation Korean-American, subverts the values of his traditional Korean family and becomes a spy for Glimmer & Company, a small information-gathering outfit in Purchase, NY.
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Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners, and may have creases. Spine has wear at edges. read more
Description: Very good. By Chang-rae Lee; ISBN: 1573225312; Pub. : Riverhead Trade; Pub. Date: 1996-03-01; Media: Paperback; Weight: 7.2 oz.; NOTE: Previous owner's name on inside front cover and first page. Other than that, excellent condition. Covers have a tiny bit of edgewear. Surfaces of covers are glossy. Binding is very good. Pages show indications of very light use. by Chang-rae Lee; ISBN: 1573225312; Pub. : Riverhead Trade; Pub. Date: 1996-03-01; Media: Paperback; Weight: 7.2 oz.; NOTE: Previous ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9781573225311ISBN:1573225312
Description: Good. Standard used condition. May have light reading or storage wear. All orders processed within 2 business days. Ships from Foxboro MA. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9781573220019ISBN:1573220019
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Good. 1996-Paperback-Cover shows minor shelf wear. ---Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9781573225311ISBN:1573225312
Description: Acceptable. Considerable cover wear and tear with creasing and scuffing to edges. Writing on pages and page edges. GoodwillnyBooks is committed to providing each customer with the highest standard of customer service. You may return new items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. read more
Edition: Large Print
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Wheeler Publishing., Me
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9781587242892ISBN:1587242893
Description: Cover Art. Very Good in Very Good jacket. Hard Back. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. X-Library with normal flaws....LARGE PRINT.....The hard cover and the jacket has very light shelf wear..............We are very careful when we list our books, but sometimes something minor may get by.... read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Riverhead Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9781573220019ISBN:1573220019
Description: Good ++ No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Pages are clean and unmarked. Corners, edges, and ends of spine are lightly rubbed. Front cover has a crease. Binding is tight. 349pp. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Date Published: 1996-03-01
ISBN-13:9781573225311ISBN:1573225312
Description: Good. Used for class has underlining and notes. No highlighting. Cover shows some wear or creases. Pages yellowed/tanned. You're gonna love this book! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9781573220019ISBN:1573220019
Description: Good. No Jacket. Bk is clean & tightm slight edgewear rubbing on cvrs, bookstore price sticker bk cvr, notation in ball point inside frt cvr, Winner The Hemingway Foundation PEN Award348 pgs The Asian Immigrant in America. read more
"A Korean-American man, son of a successful immigrant grocer, earns his living as a spy for a private agency in New York. Married to a white woman, his marriage is in peril after an accident involving his young son. The protagonist is sent to work as a mole in the office of a Korean-American city councilman with higher political ambitions. The protagonist's work is morally questionable, and is perhaps supposed to be a metaphor for either the role of a novelist or of the child of an immigrant who is at times put in the position of reporting on his family to the wider community, with unknown results.
Much of the writing about the world of Korean-American merchants is interesting, and Lee is an emotionally powerful writer, particularly talking about parenthood (and, for that matter, childhood). But periodically Lee zooms off to a presumably higher level of meaning that I was often unable to really follow."
"Henry Park is a model Korean American. His father, a trained psychiatrist from the prestigious Seoul National University, immigrates to America to take up a noble, honorable profession: grocer. Henry, or Harry as he's called by friends, studies hard, obeys his parents and tries to find his balance as he tip-toes between two worlds - the ways of the old country and that of the new.
As he grows older, Harry continues, as he would say, 'marching west', always 'marching west'. He winces at the thought of 'konglish' - broken English interspersed with Korean - and in many ways strives to be a native speaker. He marries a white woman, a blue blood from Massachussets (her dad's name is Stew); he goes to the best schools; he masters the pretensions and prejudices; he thinks he's conquered the world he isn't sure will accept him. It's only later in life, broken and reflective, that he begins to question whether he's betrayed himself and his upbringing.
As a private spy, Harry finds himself in the midst of a heated mayoral campaign acting as a foot soldier for the venerable, John Kwang - a rising Korean American councilman from Queens. As he tries to uncover for himself what's gone awry and what his snooping will produce, he finds himself in a curious situation. Left unsure of what it means to betray or to remain loyal.
--- 'But I and my kind possess another dimension. We will learn every lesson of accent and idiom, we will dismantle every last pretense and practice you hold, noble as well as ruinous. You can keep nothing safe from our eyes and ears. This is your own history. We are your most perilous and dutiful brethren, the song of our hearts at once furious and sad. For only you could grant me these lyrical modes. I call them back to you. Here is the sole talent I ever dared nurture. Here all of my American education.'"
"I really enjoyed this while I was reading it, but when I finished and tried to remember why I was going to give it four stars, the only reason I could come up with is that it wasn't about WWI or WWII, like nearly every other book I've read this summer. Chang-Rae Lee teaches creative writing at Princeton, and while I've never taken a class with him, I hear he's a pretty great professor. That coupled with the fact that my friend Tanya loves this book made it a must-read. I appreciated the way Lee took the (stereo)typical Immigrant/Ethnic Story format and injected something new into it: the fact that the main character is a spy. And not a Korean spy spying on American, or an American spy spying on Korea. He is an Korean-American spy spying on other Americans. That was quite something. I also enjoyed the discussions of language and speech. I was surprised to find myself liking his wife, the Scottish-American speech teacher. Her character was another example of Lee taking a stock character and breathing new life into it. Lee looks at race in America in a complex way, and I think in the end that's the reason I appreciated this book so much. All of the characters are smart, but none of them are smart enough to understand race. Maybe no one is."
"Keegan picked this up at a bookstore here in Korea. The author is a Korean-American, and this book is about one man's Korean-American experience. I really enjoyed the book's emphasis on language, and the author had some beautiful quotes about what it's like to speak in a foreign language - I should have marked them. I also enjoyed reading about the main character's memories of growing up in a traditional Korean family in America. In particular, he tells a story about a housekeeper who comes to live with him and his father after his mother's death. He and his father always call her "ah-jum-ma," which is a title for a married woman, and years later the main character's wife is shocked to discover that her husband doesn't know his housekeeper's name. I love how this story encapsulates the differences between Korean and American social networks, and shows up this difficulties in cross-cultural relationships. There are two intertwining narratives, one about the main character's relationship with his estranged American wife and another about his work spying on a Korean-American politician who is considering a run for mayor of New York. I enjoyed both but sometimes found it jarring to switch from one plotline to the other."
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