43 pages • 1 hour read
The Last Story of Mina Lee
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The Immigrant Experience in America
To Mina and others abroad, America “represented the only way out—not a solution but a chance to keep hope alive and burning” (116). America is an opportunity. Mr. Park believes that hard work in America guarantees success, citing his own affluence as evidence. For other characters, however, moving to America reminds them that opportunities can also go wrong. Margot believes: “Growing up American was all about erasing the past—lightly acknowledging it but then forgetting it and moving on” (44). Margot reinforces this view later when she notices how quickly America moved on after the riots following the beating of Rodney King.
American culture shocks Mina, from the food to the language to the excess. She can’t believe how many Americans carry guns, even though she fled a country destroyed by war: “She had never seen so many guns on men who were not in the military until coming to America. From what were they all protecting themselves?” (196). When Margot walks through the swap meet where her mother worked, she wonders why she hated her mother’s lifestyle so much:
Perhaps sprawling lawns and shopping malls were one version of the American dream, but this was another […] maybe it was not mainstream, maybe it was not seen with any compassion or complexity on television or in the movies, because it represented all that middle-and-upper-class people, including Margot, feared and therefore despised: a seemingly inescapable, cyclical poverty (78).
Mario is deported because he is an undocumented worker. The system that deports him doesn’t care that he came to America for a better life, or that his mother and siblings are also illegal immigrants. Mr. Kim is also at risk of deportation, and nothing he contributes, in the eyes of the law, changes the fact that he is in America illegally.
It is the challenges of being an immigrant in America that lead the Sikh cab driver to treat Mina kindly. He doesn’t charge her because he knows the struggle she faces, even if she doesn’t yet. He tells her, “You’re going to be okay” because he understands that an American immigrant like Mina will quickly wonder if she has made a mistake (28). Through these various immigrant characters, the author depicts a range of experiences that reveal the complexity of the immigrant experience.
A Woman’s Role
American and Korean American society assign specific roles to women in The Last Story of Mina Lee. They are commodities, inconveniences, trophies, mothers, daughters, and wives. When Mrs. Baek rejects Mr. Park in the alley, he tells her that women are “like animals” when they don’t have men. When Mina talks with Mrs. Baek near the end of the novel, she does so with an understanding of this situation, wondering:
[…] how many women had been trapped—in terrible marriages, terrible jobs, unbearable circumstances—simply because the world hadn’t been designed to allow them to thrive on their own. Their decisions would always be scrutinized by the lives at which they were able to sacrifice themselves, their bodies, their pleasures and desires. A woman who imagined her own way out would always be ostracized for her own strength (241).
After Margot discovers her mother has died, she talks to the landlord. He quickly changes the subject and tells Margot that she should focus on getting married. Although she bristles for a moment, she then thinks, “He was right; her mother, and women like her, were an inconvenience” (47). She helps reinforce the stereotype. The judgmental women at church do the same when Mina sees that they condescend to women without marriage prospects.
Women do not get to choose the roles society wants them to have. This is why Mina notices that, “Unlike so many women, Mrs. Baek didn’t seem to mind taking up time and space, spreading herself out” (119). It isn’t that Mrs. Baek calls attention to herself or claims any superiority; she just doesn’t apologize for who she is, and she’s unwilling to fade into the background to appease societal norms. She makes no secret of mistrusting men and of having no desire for a relationship, even though, “The whole world told women every day, If you are alone, you are no one. A woman alone is no one at all” (102).
When the novel concludes, Margot has a new sense of independence and opportunity. She can make choices that her mother never did and avoid the captivity endured by many of the novel’s other women.
Communication, Thought, and Language
One of the reasons Margot and Mina don’t understand each other better is because they can’t speak each other’s native languages fluently. Margot describes language as “a home, a shelter, a way of navigating the larger world” (43). She believes that if Mina would learn English, they could navigate the world together and make use of the same shelter. Mina, however, doesn’t want to learn English, a language that represents a society that excludes her: “What was the point of learning a language that brought you into the fold of a world that didn’t want you? Did this world want her? No. It didn’t like the sound of her voice” (232). Even when she tries, Mina encounters difficulties and negative reactions: “And when she did attempt to speak to someone on the phone, or at the DMV, she often got dirty looks or harsh, condescending responses. She didn’t need a language that wasn’t big enough for her, didn’t make room for her (233).
However, Mina isn’t opposed to learning other languages. When she decides to learn Spanish, it is out of concern for Mario. She wants to be able to talk to Lupe in greater depth so that she can be more helpful. She wonders, “How would the shape of her feelings, thoughts change if she could say them out loud? […] How could the shape of her life change if she had more people that she could reach with words? (117).
The language one can employ has a significant effect on thought. Margot and Mina can’t show each other the empathy they each deserve because they can’t explain themselves to each other. They can’t ask each other complicated questions because they can’t give each other complex answers. The language barrier between Margot and Mina is a microcosm of the large-scale language barriers between immigrants who don’t speak English and the rest of America.
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