A Gesture Life (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Chang-rae Lee
- First Published: 1999
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, 1940’s, Prostitution or prostitutes, World War II, 1980’s, Adoption or adopted children, 1990’s, Asian Americans, Japan or Japanese people, Korea or Koreans, Southeast Asia
- Locales: Japan, Burma, Bedley Run, NY
Originally meant to tell the story of a Korean “comfort woman” during World War II from her point of view, A Gesture Life was eventually changed by Chang-rae Lee to focus on a potential tormentor of the comfort women. The novel begins as the first-person narrator, Franklin “Doc” Hata, is apparently at ease with his life in his seventies. Well-accepted, integrated, and esteemed in his fictional suburban New York community of Bedley Run, he owns a large home with pool and appears to be an immigrant success story. After selling the medical supply shop he has run for more...
[The entire page is 662 words long]
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