시티 코드: 도시주의를 통한 아시아계 미국문학 읽기 (City Code: Reading Asian American Literature through Urbanism)

Ichiro, a protagonist of No-No Boy written by John Okada, unconsciously utters that the Jackson Street of Seattle has "the air of a carnival"(5). Henry Park of Native Speaker, seeing the loud and large crowd surrounding John Kwang's house in New York, feels as "if I were one of the people they were protesting, fresh off the boat, I would be sure I had just happened upon some community celebration, a festival of the culture"(340). Ichiro's utterance is to show his hatred against the ghettoized street along which drinking houses and whorehouses closely line, and Negroes are shouting and cussing. Henry's monologue reveals his sarcasm of the racialized city which would not allow "just another ethnic pol" to realize his dream of full political inclusion as mayor.
While displaying two Asian American descendents' disgust and disappointment of the city, two scenes reveal a perspective of how the city has functioned in the lives of Asian Americans. In fact, the city, as for Asian Americans, is not the same one of the existential tradition: a site of anxiety, alienation, and dissolution which is mainly conceptualized by scholars of Urbanism like Richard Lehan. Even though Asian American protagonists like Ichiro or Henry Park feel severely alienated and dissolved, it is not so much noted in terms of existential as survival implication. Dirty and shabby as the ghettoized city is, it has been a site of survival for Asian Americans, both mentally and materially. In particular, the city has greatly contributed to creating a new, conglomerated, Asian American culture, providing Asian Americans with a multi-layered venue in which they encounter with other ethnic cultures, both keep and transform their own languages and culture. With this notion, this paper examines how to relate local experiences of the city to the consciousness of the self and what the city functions in Asian American literature, including No-No Boy and Native Speaker.

Ichiro, a protagonist of No-No Boy written by John Okada, unconsciously utters that the Jackson Street of Seattle has "the air of a carnival"(5). Henry Park of Native Speaker, seeing the loud and large crowd surrounding John Kwang's house in New York, feels as "if I were one of the people they were protesting, fresh off the boat, I would be sure I had just happened upon some community celebration, a festival of the culture"(340). Ichiro's utterance is to show his hatred against the ghettoized street along which drinking houses and whorehouses closely line, and Negroes are shouting and cussing. Henry's monologue reveals his sarcasm of the racialized city which would not allow "just another ethnic pol" to realize his dream of full political inclusion as mayor.
While displaying two Asian American descendents' disgust and disappointment of the city, two scenes reveal a perspective of how the city has functioned in the lives of Asian Americans. In fact, the city, as for Asian Americans, is not the same one of the existential tradition: a site of anxiety, alienation, and dissolution which is mainly conceptualized by scholars of Urbanism like Richard Lehan. Even though Asian American protagonists like Ichiro or Henry Park feel severely alienated and dissolved, it is not so much noted in terms of existential as survival implication. Dirty and shabby as the ghettoized city is, it has been a site of survival for Asian Americans, both mentally and materially. In particular, the city has greatly contributed to creating a new, conglomerated, Asian American culture, providing Asian Americans with a multi-layered venue in which they encounter with other ethnic cultures, both keep and transform their own languages and culture. With this notion, this paper examines how to relate local experiences of the city to the consciousness of the self and what the city functions in Asian American literature, including No-No Boy and Native Speaker.