posterity, who used to be perceived as a peril or nuisance, were transformed overnight

into trusted allies. On the other hand, while Japanese-Americans were treated less harshly

previously, due to Japan's growing military power in the Pacific and its government's

strong remonstrance against discriminatory acts such as school segregation in San

Francisco and the alien land laws,274 they were singled out and collectively interned as

enemy aliens. Examining just a few instances in the history of Asian immigration is

sufficient to show that what distinguishes Asian-Americans from other minorities in the

American nation state is their malleability into a particular subject position that serves to

reinforce the already established white American political, economic, and racial

supremacy.

 Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker, A Novel of Immigration and Trauma

 Chang-rae Lee's Lee's highly acclaimed first novel Native Speaker portrays the

interstitial plight of Korean-Americans. The novel poignantly foregrounds the

psychological impact that the occupation of the precarious, liminal zone between the

outside and the inside, as well as between blacks and whites, puts on the Asian-American

interstitial ethnic subject. In addition, the novel also hints at the Korean-Americans'

group-specific problems as a middleman minority and the post-1965 Korean immigrants'

struggle for survival in the urban world, which is densely populated by other people of

color. Although not specifically mentioned, the novel also has as its backdrop the sense

of sense of betrayal and disillusionment those post-1965 Korean immigrants must have

felt, when their ideal image of America, which was cultivated after Korea made its

transition from a colonial country ruled by Japan to a free independent country espoused

by America, crumbled as they encountered racism and discrimination in it.