READ! East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee

When I first moved to New Zealand from Korea in first grade, I knew nothing about Korean literature beyond Korean folktales I read in the form of picture books. I only opened my eyes to the joys of reading when I started reading in English, first to better my grasp of this new foreign language and second as a source of comfort I could turn to in an alien environment. I spent all my birthday money on books,  spent lunchtimes and weekends reading at home, under trees, on beaches. Naturally, I dreamed of becoming a writer throughout school, churning out bad attempts at fantasy novels. When someone told me I needed a pen name if I ever hoped to be a bestselling author because of my strange Asian name (later in life, I also realized I needed a lot more things like actual talent, perseverance, and connections—but such is the nature of reality that often crushes childhood dreams) I was baffled and hurt, but had no comebacks. If I could go back in time, I would provide a list of all the amazing Asian authors I know.

The thing is, at that point in my life I didn’t know there were Asian authors writing in English (neither did the person who suggested a pen name, it seems). Although the Asian American identity is something that is talked about and celebrated, Asian New Zealanders weren’t really visible when I was growing up. Despite the fact that New Zealand has double the Asian population of America (12% in comparison to 5.6%), I simply didn’t see Asian newscasters, musicians, prominent TV characters, and most importantly, literary figures I could look up to.  As I began to think about potential research interests in undergrad, I wanted to cover Asian New Zealand writers only to find there weren’t enough to do research on.

This explains how happy I was to discover Asian American (and hopefully more Asian diasporic) literature when I came to America. After a heavily British-influenced high school education where I read Shakespeare, Brontë, or Keats, it was refreshing to see narratives resembling that of my own life. I wrote my undergrad thesis on Asian American female autobiography/memoir and it confirmed I wanted to study this field more in depth. Recently, I got to read a Korean-American novel called East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee, by Younghill Kang, deemed the father of Korean-American literature. I want to record for myself what I found most fascinating about the book, and for any potential readers, illuminate points of interest that might convince them to read it too.

The novel is categorized as a fictionalized autobiography, and follows the story of Chungpa Han, who arrives in New York and travels around North America with scholarly dreams. Trained in classical Asian literature as well as Western classics, he goes around quoting ancient Chinese poets and Shakespeare as he navigates this new country.  He quickly becomes disillusioned with the American dream when he has to do menial labour in order to support himself rather than simply focus on his intellectual growth. I don’t know any ancient Chinese or Korean poets like he does, but we share a love for literature and I was fond of this character. His pursuit of a graduate degree was also relatable, as well as the fact that he makes this journey from East to West. (Although when I first moved to New Zealand, which was my first point of contact with a Western country, I actually moved from East to more East, geographically. The “West” is a weird concept—if you want to find out more check out Contrapoint’s video about what the “West” could mean here.)

There’s a lot going on in this book, from a tragic romance between another Korean man and a white American girl that results in both of their deaths, the mistreatment of other minority groups, and its historical relevance as a vivid snapshot of New York City in the 1920s. One of the themes that most interest me, however, is the idea of citizenship and nationhood as I’ve personally lived most of my life outside the country of my citizenship. Because the novel is set before the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Asian Exclusion Act, we know that both the main character (and indeed, the author until his academic contacts petitioned for him) could not be granted legal citizenship in the US. Yet, the title of the book dictates that the intention is to become a Yankee, so it’s worth contemplating what it is to be American despite of and without the right paperwork. The idea of national identity is particularly complex in the book as he attempts to define the “American,” which he can only really do through contrast with Korea. Grappling with Korean identity is particularly difficult for him as at the time the book is set Korea is under Japanese colonial rule, and in the shadows of not just Japan but China as well. Chungpa throughout the book is often called “Chinaman” by other characters who have no notion of a country called Korea, and funnily enough even a contemporary book review refers to the novel as a book about a Chinese youth (you can see the review here). Nowadays, what it is to be Korean is further complicated by the split between the North and South. But this book is a good starting point to think about how a Korean identity is forged, especially for a Korean overseas.

The form of this novel is interesting too, as the genre of the autobiography is often grounded in what it is to be “American”—think Benjamin Franklin, stories that focus on individuality and personal narratives of success. However, I think it’s also important to remember this is a fictionalized autobiography: although many events of Chungpa’s life overlap with Younghill Kang’s, this deliberate choice might be an example of clever storytelling to protect the author from backlash with some of the social critiques being made. A lot of people have also confused the author and narrator as the same person in past reviews, perhaps because minority authors are often only expected to have something interesting to write about with stories highlighting their own foreignness rather than having the agency to produce something more creative. The strange paradox of the nonfictional genre being fictionalized may also tie into debates about authenticity that is prevalent in Asian American literary studies, especially when the text deals with a culture that might, supposedly, not be ‘authentically’ portrayed to other English-speaking (or white) readers.

While on the subject of form/style, one thing that immediately surprised me when I opened the book was the amount of references to Greek philosophers and other canonical Western literature. Chungpa even reads T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” as it is newly published at some point in the book, continuously engaging with outside texts. In almost every page, the narrator references a famous Western author as if that legitimizes his writing. Indeed, the character of Chungpa sometimes wins favour from other characters by quoting Shakespeare or some other famous poet. I think this attempt at validation may still carry over to modern day, when I begin to think I may subconsciously mention American TV shows or cultural references as if to say, hey I’m up to date with Western culture, I’m not FOB, accept me (this is problematic, of course. We shouldn’t expect or need to beg for acceptance by watching bad shows or knowing particular memes, which are great but only if you genuinely enjoy them and not as a tool for people to treat you as a real person). By referencing all these works, the narrator also reflects on the distinction between American and Asian art by saying that American artists make art as self-advertisement, for fame and individual acclaim while many classical Asian poems are anonymous because people care more about the words that are circulated than about the authorship being preserved. I’m not smart enough to do an analysis of this as it stands today, but cool to think about the good old debate on the purpose of literature and art (also, read Foucault’s “What is an Author”!).

Within two blog posts I’ve established a theme of never having any conclusions or particular angles. But, to future Su—read this blog post and know you did read this book, and return to some of the loose threads of thought you started here!