Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:09:49.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Native Sons and Native Speakers: On the Eth(n)ics of Comparison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Yung-Hsing Wu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Why should comparison be an act laden with ethical obligation? Readers of ethnic literatures have long insisted that doing justice to these literatures must be a tenet central to work calling itself ethnic studies. I argue for a renewal of that sense of obligation: the difference of ethnicity is an occasion for articulating, juxtaposing, and reworking the relations among otherwise separate ethnic literary traditions. To the extent that difference follows a logic of intertextuality–one of crossing, exchange, and perpetual expansiveness–it enables reading ethnic literatures together even as it emphasizes the ethical difficulties of such a reading practice. From the disciplinary discourse of comparative literature to the metatextual commentary in Richard Wright's “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born” and ultimately to the pragmatic context of an intertextual reading, this essay seeks to suspend ethnic difference from its position as a point of permanent untouchability. (Y-HW)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 5 , October 2006 , pp. 1460 - 1474
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ahearn, Ed, and Weinstein, Arnold. “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time: The Promise of Comparative Literature.” Bernheimer, Comparative Literature 77–85.Google Scholar
Apter, Emily. “Comparative Exile: Competing Margins in the History of Comparative Literature.” Bernheimer, Comparative Literature 86–96.Google Scholar
Baker, Houston A. Introduction. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Native Son. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1972. 1–20.Google Scholar
Bernheimer, Charles. “The Anxieties of Comparison.” Introduction. Bernheimer, Comparative Literature 1–17.Google Scholar
Bernheimer, Charles., ed. Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Bernheimer, Charles., ed. Preface. Bernheimer, Comparative Literature ix–xi.Google Scholar
Bernheimer, Charles, et al. “The Bernheimer Report, 1993.” Bernheimer, Comparative Literature 39–48.Google Scholar
Chen, Tina. “Impersonation and Other Disappearing Acts in Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee.” MFS 48 (2002): 637–67.Google Scholar
Cheung, King-Kok. Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993.10.7591/9781501721120CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chow, Rey. “In the Name of Comparative Literature.” Bernheimer, Comparative Literature 107–16.Google Scholar
Damrosch, David. “Literary Study in an Elliptical Age.” Bernheimer, Comparative Literature 122–33.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “The Law of Genre.” Acts of Literature. Ed. Attridge, Derek. New York: Routledge, 1991. 221–52.Google Scholar
Dwyer, June. “Speaking and Listening: The Immigrant as Spy Who Comes in from the Cold.” The Immigrant Experience in North American Literature. Ed. Payant, Katherine B. and Rose, Toby. Westport: Greenwood, 1999. 73–82.Google Scholar
Engles, Tim. “‘Visions of Me in the Whitest Raw Light’: Assimilation and Doxic Whiteness in Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker.” Hitting Critical Mass 4.2 (1997): 27–48.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove, 1967.Google Scholar
Fuss, Diana. Identification Papers. New York: Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Harris, Trudier. “Native Sons and Foreign Daughters.” New Essays on Native Son. Ed. Keneth Kinnamon. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. 63–84.Google Scholar
Hong, Catherine. Rev. of Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee. Vogue Apr. 1995: 236.Google Scholar
Johnson, Barbara. “The Re(a)d and the Black: Richard Wright's Blueprint.” The Feminist Difference. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. 61–73.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, David. “Want a Fight? Pick One Book for All New Yorkers.” New York Times 19 Feb. 2002: B1. Lexis-Nexis. Dupré Lib., U of Louisiana, Lafayette. 16 July 2004 <http://web.lexis-nexis.com/>.Google Scholar
Lee, Chang-rae. Native Speaker. New York: Riverhead, 1995.Google Scholar
Lee, James Kyung-Jin. “Where the Talented Tenth Meets the Model Minority: The Price of Privilege in Wideman's Philadelphia Fire and Lee's Native Speaker.” Novel 35 (2002): 231–57.10.2307/1346185CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Rachel. “Reading Contests and Contesting Reading: Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Ethnic New York.” MELUS 29.3-4 (2004): 341–52.10.2307/4141859CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“NYC to Read Native Speaker.” Publishers Weekly 18 Feb. 2002: 16. Cahiers Business Information. Lexis-Nexis. Dupré Lib., U of Louisiana, Lafayette. 16 July 2004 <http://web.lexis-nexis.com/>..>Google Scholar
Park, You-me, and Wald, Gayle. “Native Daughters in the Promised Land: Gender, Race, and the Question of Separate Spheres.” American Literature 70 (1998): 607–33.10.2307/2902711CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persico, Joseph E. “Life under Suspicion.” New York Times 17 Feb. 2002, sec. 7:9.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Comparative Literature and Global Citizenship.” Bernheimer, Comparative Literature 58–65.Google Scholar
Smith, Jeanne Rosier. Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Literature. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1997.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri. Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Sau-ling Cynthia, Wong. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Wright, Richard. “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born.” Introduction. Wright, Native Son vii–xxxiv.Google Scholar
Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York: Harper, 1940.Google Scholar