Dictators: Ethnic American Narrative and the Strongman Genre By David C. Liao B.A., State University of New York, Binghamton 2006 M.A., Brown University Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Program of English at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2015 © 2015 by David C. Liao This dissertation is accepted in its present form by the Department of English as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date _________ __________________________________________ Deak Nabers, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date _________ __________________________________________ Tamar Katz, Reader Date _________ __________________________________________ Olakunle George, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date _________ __________________________________________ Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii VITA David Chang Yi Liao was born on July 20, 1984 in Taipei, Taiwan. The child of a diplomat, he has also lived in Houston, Texas and Long Island, New York, as well as spending numerous holidays with his brothers in California. He graduated magna cum laude from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2006, earning a B.A. in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing. He began pursuing a Master’s Degree in English at Brown University in September of 2006, and began his doctoral studies with the English Department at Brown in the fall of 2008. In the course of completing his Ph.D., he has taught courses in literature and composition at both Brown and Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to thank the English Department at Brown University, who accepted me into their ranks on two separate occasions. From the very first day, Ellen Viola and Lorraine Mazza have been an invaluable source of logistical support, sage advice, humor, warmth and year-round good spirits. In particular, I would like to thank my adviser Deak Nabers, who not only took me on during a moment of transition, but gave my project a sense of clarity, cohesion and achievability. Through his tireless efforts to reach out and work with graduate students in the form of workshops and colloquiums, Deak had actually been advising and guiding me on my dissertation long before it became official. To Tamar Katz, I owe much of my formation and refinement as a scholar; having worked with me through seminars, independent studies and field exams, she never failed to ask the rigorous, important questions, and knew when a firm hand was required. I also had the pleasure of working with Olakunle George, whose helpful inquiries and insightful feedback helped me to apprehend anew the relevance and potential of my work. At Brown, I have also benefitted from the insights, talent and rigor of Ralph Rodriguez, Daniel Kim, Timothy Bewes and Ravit Reichman. Although I only worked with them briefly, the encouragement of Nancy Armstrong and Rey Chow was instrumental in my transition from a master’s-level scholar to a Ph.D.-worthy one. I also owe much to my advisers at SUNY Binghamton, Joseph Keith and Ingeborg Majer- O’Sickey. Their mentorship not only laid the most basic foundations for my even beginning to comprehend this undertaking, but also gave me the confidence and critical tools to embark on it in the first place. I hope I have made you both proud. More than anything, the Good Company is what has made this whole thing so rewarding. The friendships I have forged in the English Department have been simply matchless: Katherine Miller, Swetha Regunathan, Andrew Naughton, Sean Keck, Sara Pfaff, Debby “Tiger Mom” Katz, John Mulligan, Derek Ettensohn, David Hollingshead, Peter Kim, Nathan Conroy and Sarah Osment. Outside the English Department, I have been fortunate to enjoy the company of Dae-il Kim, Niki Clements, Kevin Creedon, Meredith Dunn, Hamzah Ansari, Daniel Picus, Heidi Wendt, Aaron Glaim, Bruno Penteado, and Lisbeth Trille Loft. From day one Angela Allan and Sachelle Ford have been my co-conspirators, my trench (computer lab) mates, great sources of support and v laughter, and ultimately, my role models. I don’t know how they put up with me at times, but I do know that I could not have gotten through this without them. I also want to acknowledge Jennifer Schnepf and Khristina Gonzalez (Margaret and Helen), whom I met on my first day of graduate school, and who became the big sisters I never had, and never realized I so needed. The extraordinary wit, irreverence, musical genius and all-around brilliance of Austin Gorman have inspired me since the very beginning, and it is to him I dedicate my Al Pacino Chapter. Paul Robertson, whose scholarship was a world away from my own, but whose vitality, honesty, fearlessness and humanity have been its own indelible part of my grad school education. My appreciation also goes out to Stephanie Tilden and Tim Syme, for their unexpected yet indispensable companionship and encouragement as I rounded out the last lap. My deepest affection goes to the Dupuis family, who took me in as one of their own, and has provided such a loving and supportive structure: Paul, Suzanne, Emily, Phillip and Alex have all been truly a second family. A universe of appreciation goes to my first family, the Liaos, from where everything I am begins and ends: Vincent, who I still look up to after all these years; Ting-Ting, who first blazed the trail for me to follow; Leslie, my teammate and ally in all things, from whom I can never feel distant, and who keeps me sane and insane in all the good ways. No words can fully express my awe and gratitude for my parents, Ching Hung and May Lin Liao, without whom none of this would have been possible. Their endless reservoirs of love, understanding, encouragement and emotional and financial support have been nothing short of tremendous, and I have been blessed to be their son. Finally, I want to thank Nicole Dupuis, my best friend, partner, and the brilliant sun and star of my life. Her unconditional love and unwavering faith in me has both recharged my sense of purpose and helped me through the difficult moments. Most of all, she has made me feel truly alive, and To Her I Dedicate Everything. vi Table of Contents Introduction 1 Literary Dictators Chapter One 18 The Authoritarian Education of Richard Wright Chapter Two 64 Good Korean/Bad Korean: Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker and the Ghost of Syngman Rhee Chapter Three 113 Literary Caudillos: Junot Diaz and the Latino/a American Dictator Novel Chapter Four 170 Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone…Generalissimo Corleone? The Godfather: Part II and the Form of Dynastic Succession Coda 208 Tyrant and the Limits of the Strongman Genre Works Cited 215 vii INTRODUCTION Literary Dictators When Lee Kuan Yew passed away on March 23, 2015, the international response—from heads of state past and present, policymakers, captains of industry, scholars, pundits, and the general commentariat—revealed the extent to which the former Prime Minister of Singapore had been, as William J. Dobson notes in Foreign Policy, “one of the most universally celebrated statesmen of the last 50 years.” Dobson appends this assessment, however, to another, more crucial one: that Lee was also “the most successful dictator of the 20th century.” Lee’s autocratic tendencies, commonly characterized as a “soft” or “pragmatic” authoritarianism or a “benevolent dictatorship,” has long been an acknowledged aspect of his rule, which saw the remote, impoverished city-state flourish into an international economic powerhouse. Nonetheless, Dobson’s charge brings into relief a subset of public opinion that takes a much darker view of the late Singaporean leader. This is a view that has been, if not exactly less popular or less vocal, then definitely less heard, due to Lee’s notorious fondness for libel suits—a testament in itself, perhaps, to his aforementioned “success” as a dictator. Writing for Salon in the wake of Lee’s death and the glowing eulogies that followed, Patrick L. Smith reminds us that “For ruling cliques in Washington and across the Western world, Lee was an exquisite example of the developing-nation leader who gets the dirty work of political repression done with the minimum of embarrassing mess.” In his editorial, which calls out Lee for being a “tyrant” and a “psychological monster” right in its title, Smith argues that Lee’s only distinction from his more infamous 1 counterparts—“Pinochet and the shah…Videla and the other colonels in Argentina…al- Sisi in Egypt…the Marcoses and Suhartos and Somozas”—is solely a matter of method and degree. In the end, it might only be a matter of dramatic flair: “No machine-gun murders in the public squares for Lee. No stadiums full of dissidents awaiting their turn to be tortured, no political prisoners thrown into the ocean from helicopters. All of Lee’s opponents kept their fingernails.”1 More pointedly, even as Smith underscores Lee’s essential sameness with the American-backed dictators listed above, he also clarifies what made Lee such an “exquisite example”: his commitment to the “dirigiste errand” involving the “installation and maintenance of one form or another of neoliberal corporatism and the corresponding subversion of democratic process.” For Smith, Singapore’s undeniable material progress—the keystone for Lee’s defenders—attests not to any fundamental incompatibility between democracy and economic advances, but rather to the mutual cancellation of democracy and neoliberal capitalism. What Smith’s remarks highlight about Lee’s “brand of leadership,” I would propose, is almost something like a “model minority” quality on a global scale, pertaining to “a man and a nation the cliques in Washington wish the whole of the developing world would emulate.” And just as the model minority myth as applied to Asian Americans entails favorable comparisons to other minority groups such as African Americans and Latinos, the East Asian “Tiger Economies” are frequently touted as aspirational models for African and Latin American nations, as evidenced most recently by the speculations that pop up regarding Rwanda as a potential “Singapore of Africa” or Panama as the 1 Patrick L.