Native Speaker

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1995

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-11

Chapters 12-18

Chapters 19-23

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 7-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary

Content warning: This section contains quoted racial slurs directed at Asian Americans that appear in the source text.

Henry’s son, Mitt, died when he was seven years old. Henry and Lelia would bring Mitt to Henry’s father’s house in the suburbs during the summers because New York City in the summertime was too hot, dirty, mean, and dangerous. While being in the suburbs was good for Mitt, during his first summer, he learned racial slurs that other children in the neighborhood directed at him; words such as “chink” and “gook.” Henry and Lelia had comforted Mitt, and Henry went around the neighborhood introducing himself to the other parents and revealing his son’s bullying. Eventually, Mitt became friends with his former bullies. Mitt died when the other boys made a dog pile on him that lasted too long and was too heavy; the boys accidentally suffocated him to death. Mitt had often played with Henry’s tape recorder, so his voice lives on through his self-recordings. Henry calls Lelia at Molly’s to ask to borrow the tapes; he needs to hear his son’s voice again. She leaves the tapes with the super for him. He listens through his son and wife talking then goes to Molly’s apartment to see his wife though they had agreed not to see each other while separated.

Lelia lets him in, and they talk about the time after Mitt’s death. Lelia resents Henry for having his job to escape to and that her job working with children made her mean. She accuses Henry of not showing enough emotion after Mitt’s death, being so solemn and dignified that he made her grief look like the behavior of a mentally unstable woman. Lelia tells him about visiting her mother in Boston. Lelia’s parents are divorced, and Henry recalls his encounters with her father, who simultaneously insulted him by admitting that he didn’t like the idea of his daughter dating an “Oriental” and complimenting him through his admiration of his father’s lack of entitlement.

Lelia apologizes for the list she wrote about Henry. She admits that she slept with another man in Italy. She says that she still loves Henry but doesn’t trust him because he’s never really present and because she can’t figure out what he’s thinking. Lelia uses Mitt’s death as an example. Henry rarely says his name and still calls the death an accident, even though to Lelia, the death of her child can’t be an accident. She cries at the thought that Mitt died because he was biracial, and Henry lays with her.

Chapter 8 Summary

Henry finally meets Kwang. He notices how everyone in the room orients themselves to him, how Janice stiffens with delight and anticipation. Henry senses that Kwang communicates an immediate kinship when they meet—two Korean men operating in the same universe. But Henry notices that Kwang has this ability with everyone; the ability to make every individual feel connected to him even while Kwang keeps his distance. Henry is impressed by Kwang and finds him partially unrecognizable:

He displayed an ambition I didn’t recognize, or more, one I hadn’t yet envisioned as something a Korean man would find significant or worthy of energy and devotion; he didn’t seem afraid like my mother and father, who were always wary of those who would try to shame us or mistreat us (139).

In retrospect, Henry recognizes that in other ways, he can read Kwang well because Kwang embodies everything the research implied that he would be.

Chapter 9 Summary

Kwang’s constituency is powerful because it encompasses the immigrant diasporas of Queens. Though he doesn’t retain any hold on white or Black voters, the community he represents is large enough to keep him in power and his office well-staffed. But Kwang’s work was not without risk. For example, Chinese and Korean gang leaders believe that Kwang betrays them to the police. Kwang maintains his exterior demeanor of calm, cool, and collected, but Henry sees him screaming at his wife, close up in her face, in the privacy of their car.

Kwang is amiable with his staff, and Eduardo seems to be his favorite. He makes everybody feel respected, even loved.

Eduardo and Henry help arrange Kwang’s meeting with a group of Black ministers. Scrutiny of Kwang has sharpened since Mayor De Roos, on the defense after the news about his affair, publicly accused Kwang of using shady means to earn votes. After the meeting, Kwang speaks to the crowd of citizens and reporters. He urges unity and discourages viewing neighbors as the Other. He unites disparate ethnic communities in Queens by reminding them what they have in common: the desire for dignity, safety, and respect, and a troubled history of prejudice from majority institutions. Gunshots are fired, and the crowd disperses in a frenzy. Henry helps get Kwang safely into his car and away from the sudden violence.

Chapter 10 Summary

Henry meets with Jack at their firm’s apartment, used for top-secret conversations on intelligence. Lelia had never asked where Henry went late into the night, adding to the mystery and suspicion around Henry. Henry still loves Lelia. Their relationship had moved quickly and passionately, and he had asked her to marry him after three months of dating. Lelia had been in previous relationships that were marked by men who tried to change her, something Henry never imagined doing, partly because he was always too concerned about changing himself.

When he meets with Jack, they talk about Henry’s ongoing separation with Lelia and about his meetings with her. Jack encourages Henry to not give up on Lelia but not to rush her either.

Henry got his job as a spy when he met Dennis outside the career services office of his alma mater. He hadn’t yet found a serious career path though he had graduate a few years ago. At the time, he was looking into graduate school. Dennis introduced his firm as a research services firm and encouraged Henry to come in for a meeting.

Henry asks Jack how he got into their line of business. Jack had started out running errands for criminals in his home country, and one job led to another until he became a full-time spy. Jack had had a difficult life, devoid of choices. The shining light of his life had been his wife Sophie, who died of cancer. Jack notes that the injustice of beautiful people like Sophie and Mitt dying is that it makes the living wonder if they are marred, if only good people die early.

Jack speaks to Henry about his work. He shares that Dennis needs more notes from him, that Henry is not reporting enough about his case on Kwang. Jack is concerned about Henry and believes he should have quit after his failure on the Luzan case. He advises Henry to find something to pin on Kwang , report it to Dennis, and close the case quickly.

Chapter 11 Summary

Henry starts working longer hours at Kwang’s office, crafting the balanced image of a person who is new to the job but talented. He learned this balance from Pete Ichibata, a brilliant man whose ability to deconstruct others is unparalleled. In training with Pete, Henry watched him methodically seduce a Chinese engineering student who had been organizing anti-Chinese government rallies with friendly overtures of relatable immigrant jokes until, only a couple of hours in, the young student revealed all the identities of his loved ones at home, people who would be doomed now that Pete knew their names.

But the student had been young and easily manipulated. Kwang and his office were accustomed to the dirty politics of urban life and would not be so easy to break. But because Henry has intimate access to Kwang, his job is easier because he doesn’t need to dig too deep to notice the nuances of Kwang’s operation, including the thorough records Kwang’s office keeps on his deals and voters. Henry discovers quickly that Kwang has a remarkable memory. He can remember extremely specific details about people, even though he meets countless people in his line of work.

Kwang takes Henry out to dinner, where they discuss the boycotts of Korean grocery stores and the mayor’s lukewarm response. Kwang notes that a Black versus Korean race war is one that white people can be comfortable with and ignore. Kwang knows that Henry’s father had owned grocery stores. Typically, Henry’s spy identity would be a fabrication, but given the context of this job, it made sense to reveal certain truths about his real life. It can be dangerous to do this, but sometimes keeping up with the web of lies a spy curates can be more difficult.

Kwang had owned a business selling and renting out dry-cleaning machines in Queens, but his business expanded to other states, putting him in a leadership position within his community, leading to politics. Before going to dinner, Henry accompanies Kwang as he visits local storeowners, attempting to mediate the tensions between Korean and Black business owners. It was a tension with which Henry was familiar because his father had always been suspicious and dismissive of Black customers and employees in his stores.

Chapters 7-11 Analysis

In chapters 7 through 11, Lee reveals more details of Henry’s fragile state of mind. Lee reveals that Mitt died when his friends accidentally smothered him to death in a game. The shock and trauma of the death of his son was not only a tragedy, but it also highlighted the differences between Henry and Lelia.

There is an implicit racism in Mitt’s death, even though it was an accident. Lelia identifies this, in part because she can’t process the death of her child as an accident. In grief and mourning, she searches for a reason. That all the boys except for Mitt were white presents Mitt as a martyr, a mixed-race little boy who was not permitted to live in the world. For Lelia, homing in on Mitt’s difference from the boys who killed him is a coping mechanism. But for Henry, such a tactic takes on a different meaning because as an Asian man in America, he shoulders the burdens of racism and Otherness that Lelia is free of, until her half-Asian child makes that Otherness a more intimate and direct part of her life. The racism in Mitt’s tragic death is further implied through Mitt’s first experiences with the other boys, experiences that were based on racism. As children, Mitt’s friends already knew racist slurs, emphasizing the insidious nature of racism. Their childhood innocence was already diluted by racist constructs that they had learned from their parents, the media, and other influences. Therefore, it is difficult to separate Mitt’s accidental death from his friends’ initial rejections of him based on his race. The reality of this racism is something Henry has dealt with his entire life, a great divide of experience between him and Lelia. Lelia’s father refers to Henry as an “Oriental,” another racial slur, emphasizing that Henry engages with white supremacy in all aspects of his life, even in his extended family.

Mitt’s death further breaks apart the relationship between Henry and Lelia because of their personality differences. Lelia is very expressive while Henry keeps his emotions to himself. Lelia can’t tell what Henry is thinking or how he feels while Lelia is an open book to Henry. People deal with grief in different ways, but their inability to grieve and talk about Mitt’s death in the same way accentuates a divide in the way they connect (or don’t connect) with one another. The loss of their child, the product of their love and union, is a symbolic loss of their trust in their relationship.

Lelia and Henry exist in a murky in-between in which they’re not together, but they’re not divorced. Though a reconciliation seems unlikely, neither of them can take the next step to permanently break up. This suggests that their love for one another is still worth fighting for. But Henry and Lelia are both vulnerable and weakened by their trauma. Henry failed in his assignment with Luzan in part because Luzan was a therapist that gave Henry treatment for his emotional distress. Henry struggles with his psyche, which means that he has work to do on himself before he can reconcile with Lelia in a way that will provide the couple with a second chance.

Lelia’s cruelty adds to this conflict. She apologizes for the list she gave Henry, which brings up more questions. Does Lelia’s apology mean that she didn’t mean what she said? If that’s the case, then Lelia’s list of hurtful and racist characteristics means that she knows how to hurt Henry. Lee asks his reader: Is it worse to be racist, or to use racism as a way of harming people? And where do we draw that line? Henry obsessed over the list, even though it doesn’t make him love Lelia less, implying that Henry has internalized racism and doesn’t blame Lelia for thinking racist thoughts about him. How could two people who love each other move past this conflict? And does Lelia truly love Henry if she can think, write, and share these thoughts about him?

Implicit racism is also highlighted in the feud between Kwang and Mayor De Roos. Kwang is a political threat to the mayor because Kwang unites disparate ethnic communities and represents a life experience and connection with a part of New York City with which De Roos is out of touch. De Roos uses racism to distract the public from his own moral failings. He implies that Kwang’s political dealings are shady, calling his practices “third world.” De Roos attempts to tap into American xenophobia and ingrained notions of an Asian threat to diminish Kwang’s burgeoning political power and influence. This symbolically parallels Lelia with Mayor De Roos and Kwang with Henry.

The job on Kwang is difficult for Henry because of this parallel. In Kwang , Henry sees certain aspects of himself, but he also sees a novelty in Kwang’s power. A Korean immigrant with such power and confidence is foreign to Henry, and he is pulled into Kwang's charm as much as anybody else in his orbit. Henry further blurs the lines on this assignment by deciding to incorporate facts from his real life into his false identity. He retains his name, his wife’s job, and his father’s history. This helps to ingratiate himself to Kwangand gives Henry a certain level of confidence in the assignment because contextually, he understands the people Kwang works with and for. But it also threatens the required impersonal distance between subject and spy. The consequences of this are immediate; Henry doesn’t report his notes on Kwang with the thoroughness he typically brings to his job. Jack rightly posits that Henry should have quit the firm after the Luzan case. It is no longer possible for Henry to confidently wield falsities in order to trick people into providing him with information that will lead to their doom. Because Henry’s first-person point of view is telling the story of the Kwang case in the past tense, Lee inserts foreshadowing that Henry will destroy Kwang’s career. The reader knows that the ending of this novel is not that Kwang is so inspiring that Henry leaves his job. Instead, the reader is aware that despite his charm, Kwang has dark secrets that will lead to his undoing.

In these chapters, Lee uses the setting of New York City as a symbolic environment. New York is a unique city because of its hyper-diversity, segregated boroughs, and tough-talk political culture. New York is the city of dreamers, a place where immigrants and native-born Americans alike come for money, connections, and the miracle of success. Kwang embodies this New York American Dream because he is a role model for the immigrant community and is able to speak directly to issues that impact New Yorkers. The chaotic nature of New York, where everyone but the super-wealthy live in close quarters, heightens the tensions between different cultures, emphasizing the need for someone like Kwang. New York is also a metropolis in which people can be relatively anonymous, providing Henry with a way of hiding. Native Speaker is very much a novel about New York City.