The real art of American Han lies in the circuitous path this narrative follows ... What Jane gradually pieces together is a history shaped by parents determined to push their children into the swift-moving stream of American success. It’s a tragedy of almost bottomless torment, all the more painful for its waste and futility. But despite Jane’s wholly justified grievances, American Han rarely sounds like a wail of complaint — or not for long. Instead, it’s a desperate effort to understand her parents, to grasp the frustration and the fury they must have felt trying to navigate a thicket of condescending expectations and resentments ... What looks initially like another story of immigrant striving turns out to be something more unsettling — a family struggling with pain that only one of them can articulate.
In Lee’s reflective and layered storytelling, 'han' pervades the novel, as something Korean immigrants cannot leave behind and something they pass to the next generation.
The novel asks a question for the ages—what happens to love when it is pushed, prodded, squeezed and weighed on from all angles? Fortunately, the question is layered enough to render Lisa Lee’s debut a powerfully complex, moving take on one family’s answer.
A hypnotic exposé of immigrant identity; cultural, racial, and generational divides; and the myriad ways in which family can (and will) distance and destroy, encourage and (maybe) heal.
