Suzy’s Journey from Surveillance to Sousveillance in Suki Kim’s The Interpreter

Abstract

This article reads Suki Kim’s The Interpreter as an anti-surveillance narrative. A relationship of oppositionality is observed here between Kim’s narrative and traditional detective fiction. The article reads this oppositionality as a contradiction focusing on the protagonist’s journey. The narrative witnesses Suzy’s beginnings as an object of several gazes of surveillance and ends with her gazing back at them. Furthermore, the interpreter in question makes for a contradictory character, as she constantly challenges readers’ gazes and expectations through her unconventional path. A final contradiction is explored in the last image that the narrative conjures up attesting to the failure of developmental narratives in immigrant stories such as this one.