쑤전 최의 『외국인 학생』에 나타난 아시아 남성과 백인 여성의 사랑 (Interracial love in Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 영미문학연구회
· 수록지 정보 : 영미문학연구 / 17호 / 151 ~ 180페이지
· 저자명 : 김영미

초록

This study attempted to explore the representation of interracial love in Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student. The relationship between an Asian man and a white woman has been dealt with in other Asian American literature. The typical representation of this interracial love presents an Asian man’s assimilating desire and his idealization of a white woman. The Foreign Student is both a story of an Asian man, Ahn Chang’s exile from the nightmarish history of his country and a story of his settlement and new beginning in America. In his story of settlement, the love of a white woman, Katherine is integral. In this respect his story seems to reflect the typical plot of interracial love. But Ahn Chang’s love story with Katherine is different in two aspects. First, although Ahn Chang received great help from Katherine to get recovered from the traumatic experience in his past and start a new beginning in America, Katherine also could get out of her troublesome relationship with Charles Addison thanks to Ahn Chang. In this aspect they both opened a way for each other to be free from their past's constriction. Second, their love does not mean to enter the dominant social order but to remain outside it. Their marginal position denies assimilation into the exiting social order. The author's suggestion that it will take lots of miraculous changes for their love to be fulfilled in reality demonstrates the limits of their hierarchical society. One more notable thing in their love relationship is that they are seen to easily transcend their own sexual, racial, and national differences. In this novel, their similarity as marginal consciousness to the world is more stressed than the differences of their subject positions. The acute and subtle recognition of these differences is needed for stronger and enduring love relationship.

영어초록

This study attempted to explore the representation of interracial love in Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student. The relationship between an Asian man and a white woman has been dealt with in other Asian American literature. The typical representation of this interracial love presents an Asian man’s assimilating desire and his idealization of a white woman. The Foreign Student is both a story of an Asian man, Ahn Chang’s exile from the nightmarish history of his country and a story of his settlement and new beginning in America. In his story of settlement, the love of a white woman, Katherine is integral. In this respect his story seems to reflect the typical plot of interracial love. But Ahn Chang’s love story with Katherine is different in two aspects. First, although Ahn Chang received great help from Katherine to get recovered from the traumatic experience in his past and start a new beginning in America, Katherine also could get out of her troublesome relationship with Charles Addison thanks to Ahn Chang. In this aspect they both opened a way for each other to be free from their past's constriction. Second, their love does not mean to enter the dominant social order but to remain outside it. Their marginal position denies assimilation into the exiting social order. The author's suggestion that it will take lots of miraculous changes for their love to be fulfilled in reality demonstrates the limits of their hierarchical society. One more notable thing in their love relationship is that they are seen to easily transcend their own sexual, racial, and national differences. In this novel, their similarity as marginal consciousness to the world is more stressed than the differences of their subject positions. The acute and subtle recognition of these differences is needed for stronger and enduring love relationship.

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