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A Novel
by Lisa Lee
Book Reviewed by:Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother, Kevin, dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud.
Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional tennis player.
But where they started is nowhere near where they have ended up: Jane has stopped going to her law school classes, and Kevin, now a policeman, has become increasingly distant. Their parents, each on their own path toward the elusive American Dream (their mother hell-bent on having the perfect house and the perfect family, their father obsessed with working his way up from one successful business to the next), don't want to see the family unraveling. When Kevin goes missing, no one recognizes his absence as the warning sign it is until it erupts, forcing them all to come to terms with their past and present selves in a country that isn't all it promised it would be.
Both deeply serious and wickedly funny, American Han is a profound story about striving and assimilation, difficult love, and family fidelity. A searing portrait that challenges assumptions about the immigrant experience, Lisa Lee's debut introduces a powerful new voice on the literary landscape.
Chapter 2: No Middle Name
My name is Jane Kim. Kim is a common name in Korea, and therefore also in the places in America where Koreans live. But for a long time when I was growing up in Napa, as far as I knew there were no Kims — or Parks or Lees or Moons or Chos — to be found anywhere outside the walls of our house. I knew that Koreans lived elsewhere, just not where we lived. I saw these Koreans, including cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, hardly ever. It wasn't until fifth grade that I met other Koreans in Napa: a Korean girl adopted by a white family and a Korean boy with a Korean father and a white mother from France. The three of us were simultaneously drawn to and apprehensive of each other. We thought of ourselves as rare. To see myself in someone else was an affirmation, yet somehow horrifying.
I do not have a "Korean name." Sorry to disappoint. My parents thought that a girl born in America should have an "American name." Choosing a name is the first chance ...
Han is never defined within the text of Lisa Lee's debut novel, but it informs every aspect of the narrative, which expertly distills this weighty, complicated concept into the story of one young woman. American Han is structured into three sections: The Tycoon, The Truck Driver, and The All-American Boy, which respectively examine Jane's relationship with her mom, her dad, and her brother. When Jane sees on the news one day that Kevin has committed a horrifying act, it feels at once shocking and inevitable. It feels disconnected from the brother she once knew, but possible for the stranger who has taken his place. Told in a vignette style, American Han is ponderous and slow moving, occasionally to its detriment, but what it lacks in plot it makes up for in sharp observation. It's an ambitious response to the Korean American immigrant experience, narrated with heartbreaking sincerity by its central character...continued
Full Review
(818 words)
(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).
Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
I was captivated by this voice— so funny, blunt, probing, wrenching, moving. Lee's searchingly honest portrayal of each character here means no one is spared, and it means no one is dropped, either. What a powerful examination of family, society, self. Percival Everett, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of James
Tone perfect. To say that this book is smart is an understatement. The whole performs as a fantastic sleight-of-hand. Lee makes us look one way while all sorts of stuff comes into focus around us. This is a novel about a singular and eccentric family but yields understanding about so much more. Large issues abound here. This is a beautiful, important novel that will leave a mark. Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy
American Han is often hilarious, often gutting, and always deeply humane. These unforgettable characters will echo in my mind long after I've become a prickly immigrant elder myself.
Korean immigration to the US occurred in three waves: first from 1903-1949, second from 1950-1964, and third from 1965 on. The first wave was mostly comprised of laborers who were brought in from Korea to Hawaii to work on pineapple and sugar plantations. The second wave began after Korea's liberation from Japanese rule in 1945 and accelerated during and after the Korean War (1950–1953). The division of the peninsula into US-occupied South Korea and Soviet‑occupied North Korea set the stage for the conflict, and the war's devastation and displacement led to many Koreans—particularly "war brides," adoptees, and students—migrating to the United States.
It's the third wave of immigration that concerns Lisa Lee in her...
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