Multiethnic Literatures in the U.S.

Aloft by Chang-Rae Lee is the story of a sixty-something year old man by the name of Jerry Battle. This novel focuses on many parts of Jerry’s life, most important to him being his relationships with his children, the family business, and his love of flying his own plane. Race is also a prevalent topic throughout the entire novel. Jerry, who is white, was married to an Asian woman named Daisy, before her death, and they had two children together, Theresa and Jack. After her death, Jerry begins to see another woman named Rita, who is Puerto Rican. Obviously, there are many race-related comments that can be made by Jerry, judging on his family alone, and he makes them numerous times throughout the novel. His general view of race in America is not unlike the view that many of us have and also struggle with: it’s the first thing he sees and he wishes it was not a factor, but it somehow always is.
Lee sums up Jerry’s thoughts on race in a passage on page 248: “[I]f a guy like me is always having to think twice when he’d rather not do so at all, what must that say about this existence of ours but that it restlessly defies out attempts at its capture, time and time again.” This is said in response to a stereotype that Asians are not as emotional as any other race and Jerry comments that he finds this to be untrue regarding the Asians he knows. Clearly, race is an issue at the forefront of Jerry’s concerns, as he describes being “hopelessly obsessed with race and difference, [like the rest of the world].” Jerry wants to be an open-minded, unbiased type of person, but there is still something he can’t quite shake.
It is through Jerry that Lee makes reference to how society as a whole views and reacts around race. Race should not be an issue, but for some reason, it constantly finds its way into daily conversation and situations. If this type of thinking continues, our society will never fulfill its potential and the society will be, for lack of a better word, worthless. Jerry wants to change his view of “fetishizing what’s not”, but it is engrained in just who Jerry Battle is, and Jerry is a personification of the problems we as a society face.
Lee tackles race from a drastically different perspective than any of the books previously discussed in class: through the eyes of a privileged white middle-class businessman. Much like today’s generation, there is a lack of emotional connection, the strong desire to accomplish, and the notion of avoidance that our society depends upon. Battle avoids confronting the emotional needs of his family and girlfriends. His daughter, perhaps in his shadow, avoids thinking about (and later acting on) her diagnosis of cancer; and his son avoids thinking about the impending implosion of the family business. The children have all the gadgets and toys at their disposal, similar to how one would someday describe our iPod and computer dependent generation. And as our society continues to progress, we are still bogged down with racism, seemingly never able to release ourselves from its hold. Although a novel from a drastically different standpoint, from the oppressor instead of the oppressed, it is interesting to see that not only is the oppressor aware, but also bothered by the notion of racism.

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