Younghill Kang (1898-1972) was an early Korean American writer.
1. Life
As a child in Korea, Kang was educated in both Confucian and Christian missionary schools. In 1921, he fled Korea because of his anti-Japanese, pro-independence activism; he went first to Canada (where he briefly studied at Dalhousie University), then to the United States. He received his B.S. from Boston University in 1925 and an Ed.M. in English education from Harvard University in 1927.
Kang is best known for The Grass Roof, published 1931, and its sequel East Goes West, published in 1937. The books are fictionalized memoirs that follow Chungpa Han, a young, idealistic Korean man who is against the Japanese occupation of Korea. "Part picaresque adventure, part shrewd social commentary, East Goes West casts a sharply satirical eye on the demands and perils of assimilation. It is a masterpiece not only of Asian American literature but also of American literature," Penguin Random House writes. Korean American author Alexander Chee calls the novel "a Nabakovian stylistic tour de force, from start to finish."
In addition to The Grass Roof and East Goes West, Kang translated Korean literature into English and reviewed books for The New York Times. He authored an unpublished play, Murder in the Royal Palace, which was performed both in the US and in Korea. Kang also traveled in Europe for two years on a Guggenheim Fellowship, curated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and worked as an Asian expert for the U.S. government in both U.S. Military Office of Publications and the Corps Office of Civil Information. Kang received the Halperine Kaminsky Prize, the 1953 Louis S. Weiss Memorial Prize, and an honorary doctorate from Korea University.
2. Writing
Kang first wrote in Korean and Japanese, switching to English only in 1928 and under the tutelage of his American wife, Frances Keeley. He worked as an editor for the Encyclopedia Britannica and taught at New York University, where his colleague Thomas Wolfe read the opening chapters of his novel The Grass Roof and recommended it to Scribner’s. The book was admired by such other authors as Rebecca West and H. G. Wells, and was considered for a movie adaptation by Hollywood. The Grass Roof was well received in its time, since it seemed to confirm American disdain for Korea. East Goes West, however, criticized the United States and remained less popular until the multicultural movement gave it renewed attention.
The Grass Roof uses the character of Chungpa Han to depict Kang's life in Korea and to explain his decision to leave. Han chooses to leave Korea rather than join the popular resistance movement fighting for independence from the Japanese; he has been influenced by Western literature and prefers the promises of individualism in the West to the mass movements and nationalism and emphasis on family connections that he sees in Korea, which he views as dying.
East Goes West continues the story of Han (standing in for Kang) and his life in the United States, where he notices how involved his fellow immigrants are in Korean independence and how much they hope to return to their native land. His distance from his fellow immigrants increases his sense of loneliness in his new country; Moreover, his hopes for a new life in the West are never realized, as his dreams exceed the reality of American opportunity at that time. He befriends two other Koreans—Jum and Kim—who are also interested in becoming truly American, but they too have never been able to enter fully into American society. He hopes that furthering his schooling will be the solution, but even a scholarship to college does not solve his problems. As the novel ends, Han has found most of his dreams dashed, except for the Buddhist hope of a life beyond this one.
