Chang-rae Lee's novel A Gesture Life

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Chang-rae lee, in A Gesture Life, pictures a Japanese immigrant named Franklin Hata. Hata have been seeking assimilation into the American society. To become part of the society, Hata tries to become the perfect citizen in the society, a "mascot" who everyone knows and respects. To further his assimilation, he tries to complete the picture of a whole and healthy family as many ideal Americans. Through adapting Sunny, Hata wants to assimilate through a parental figure. Through parental figure that is caring, a good parent and good heritage, supremely suggesting that a parent that is successful in all is a parent that is successful in society. But Sunny plays a different character in his life, a character that alters Hata's idea as she is a miscegenation subject that wanders around the margins of Bedley Run. With an adopted daughter as Sunny, Hata has nothing but disappointment.

Maybe you don't know it, but all you care is your reputation in this snotty, shitty town, and how I might hurt it… "I don't need you," she said softly, and without remorse. "I never needed you. I don't know why, but you needed me, but never the other way." (94-96)

On the night Hata seeks for Sunny at Gizzi's house, the pure figure of womanhood Hata longs for vanishes before his eyes. As he watches Sunny "run her hands over herself, pressing across the skimpy shirting and down her naked thighs and up again…she was moving and dancing with every suggestion, and then finally she was touching herself in places no decent woman would wish ...

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... his doorstep. As Sunny arrives, she is a miscegenation subject of an African-American GI and a Korean bar girl disappoints Hata. As Hata wish for his good heritage and his representation in the society of a pure and good family vanishes. As Sunny grows, Hata provides her with many different activities to build up a reputation for him and Sunny, but Sunny refuses to follow his wishes and goes to the margins of Bedley Run. Seeing Sunny in Gizzi's house leads to disappointment to Hata as he wants his daughter to be well educated and well represented in public. Although Hata is able to be the perfect parent in the society, with Sunny, Hata can't assimilate into the American society as he wished. No matter how hard he tries to be the number one citizen and the perfect parent.

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