마리 리의 소설들에 나타난 인종적 타자성과 인종간의 로맨스

초록

This paper discusses racial otherness and interracial romances represented in Marie G Lee’s Finding My Voice, Necessary Roughness and If It Hadn’t Been For Yoon Jun. First, this paper examines how racial otherness or whiteness influences the identity construction of the contemporary Korean American teen protagonists such as Ellen Sung, Chan Kim, and Alice Larsen growing up in an all-white town in northern Minnesota. Secondly, this paper analyzes three types of interracial romance. One is amongst a Korean American girl, a white boy and a white girl and another is between a Korean American boy and a white girl. The other romance is amongst a Korean American girl, a Korean American boy and a white boy. However, this paper doesn’t focus on only the description of the interracial romances but also exploring how the romances reflect the reality of the racialized hierarchy of white America through the love triangles, anxieties, threats and violence to Asian/Korean American girls. Lastly, this paper explores how Asian/Korean youth’s feminity and masculinity are represented through the contrasting characterizations of the Korean American protagonists.

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