East Goes West

by Younghill Kang

  The recommendations that Kang’s citizenship bid received from university presidents, bestselling writers, philosophers, politicians, and publishers represent the initial success and the ultimate limitations of such a strategy. Maxwell Perkins writes: “I have known Younghill Kang both professionally as an editor, and personally, for some ten years now, and I believe him to be thoroughly qualified—in his understanding of American principles and in his love for this country—to be a citizen of whom Americans can be proud” (112). Kang is thus singled out as a talented intellectual who, through his demonstrated commitment to “American principles” can be trusted with the honor of citizenship. A comment by the popular author Louis Adamic expresses a similar sentiment: “Younghill Kang is, emotionally and intellectually, identified with America; his interests in America, in fact, are greater—in many respects—than those of all too many native Americans” (112). By out-Americanizing the Americans, Kang is deemed worthy of becoming one.

  Both these endorsements, like the citizenship bid itself, presuppose a utopian vision of reasonableness, a belief that for the exceptionally gifted, exceptions can be made—that the racist structures that had conspired to shut Kang and countless other immigrants out could, under the right conditions, be flexible.20 They are an appeal to the seductive if elusive humanism on which Kang’s hopes for success in the U.S. were built. In an article requesting support for the bills, Kang would write: “Democracy is the only possible medium in which men may struggle individually toward poise and dignity and self-respect. . . . If we behave ourselves and move with high thoughts, each man attains kinship with a king” (33:62). But neither Kang’s illustrious connections nor his personal and literary achievements nor his “high thoughts” ultimately proved sufficient to remove him from the ranks of those barred from citizenship because of their race. The congressional bills that had been introduced as part of his citizenship bid were never passed.

  It is a testament to Kang’s perspicacity that his book already contains within it a critique of the racist culture that would burst his idealism. Kang might have been enticed by the possibilities offered by an idealization of individualism, but he is not stupid. Unlike Han, he is not surprised to find that a “crystallized caste system” exists in America. East Goes West might open with the hopeful optimism of Carlyle’s Everlasting Yea, but it closes on a much more ambivalent note.

  In the last pages of the book, Han describes a recurring dream: he is trying to reach his childhood friends who are playing on a rope bridge that leads to a “paradise of wild and flowery magic.” As he descends to meet them, things begin to fall out of his pockets—“money and keys, contracts and business letters. Especially the key to my car, my American car” (2:361–62). He chases after them, suddenly finding himself in a cellar. He notices that he is not alone:

  Other men were in that cellar with me—some frightened-looking Negroes, I remember. Then looking back, I saw . . . men with clubs and knives. The cellar was being attacked. The Negroes were about to be mobbed. I shut the door and bolted it, and called to my frightened fellows to help me hold the door.

  “Fire, bring fire,” called the red-faced men outside.

  And through the grating I saw the flaring torches being brought. And applied. Being shoved, crackling, through the gratings.

  I awoke like the phoenix out of a burst of flames (2:362).

  In pursuit of that ultimate icon of the American dream—his car keys—Han is cornered by the ugly reality of his position in society. The fire-baptism that he experiences here is not the birth into a newfound sense of freedom that Carlyle envisioned as the Everlasting Yea. It is the realization that to be non-white in a fundamentally racist society is to be trapped by others’ fear of you. It is a birth into an expectation of violence. In the end, Han has more in common with the “frightened-looking Negroes” than with the “red-faced men” gathering outside—he too is trapped.

  Kang’s belief that he could escape the metaphorical fate he depicted in East Goes West was based on an arrogance that was both his strength and his greatest weakness. In an essay called “Younghill Kang’s Unwritten Third Act,” James Wade writes:

  Somewhere in [Kang’s] middle years those vaulting aspirations were realized to be impossible, an experience that happens to all of us, except the most unassuming. Kang, in his pride and sense of superiority (and he was superior in a great many ways), apparently wilted under the realization. If he could not be the greatest, he would not settle for second-best: for him it was genius or nothing. Rather than compromise those ambitions cherished from childhood, he fell silent and saw his career ebb away into relative obscurity. For such a man, the late-learned lesson must have been a bitter one (108:59).

  Blaming Kang’s lack of productivity on ego alone is not entirely accurate, however. This “relative obscurity” was triggered as much by profound disillusionment with the political situation as by the onslaught of middle age. “It has been hard for me to retake my place in American life after World War II,” Kang would write, “partly because of my restless anxiety about the world situation, particularly the recent Korean events” (66). In the aftermath of these upheavals, Kang found that he could not maintain the level of poise required to balance between the twin poles of his intellectual ambitions and his pragmatic, social needs.

  The mental and material cost of all this for Kang was great. As Lucy Lynn Kang poignantly writes, her father “was not equipped to survive in a system of capitalism and free enterprise, once the bubble of success broke” (119).21 Moreover, by assuming that he could transcend the restraints on his fellow Asian immigrants, he had become complicit in the diminution of his own work. Kang’s youthful idealization of the opportunities awaiting him in the United States must have seemed like that first haircut Chungpa Han receives upon arriving in New York—sitting back in the barber’s chair, he is seduced by the luxuries of the moment. He doesn’t yet realize how much this momentary indulgence will cost him (2:17). By 1954, Kang would write:

  I was of the Western generation that had matured believing in Northrup’s Meeting of East and West. I foresaw great cross-fertilization of science and art. I thought of myself . . . as a cultural go-between, never as a member of any political party. In more ways than one I was seeing the death of all I had hoped for. Such a job is hardly possible now and I seem to have no job, a small enough tragedy in the greater one holding us all” (66).

  As he crisscrossed the country in an old Buick, supporting himself through lectures and occasional teaching jobs, Kang would become alienated from even a sense of his own literary accomplishments.

  If, in the end, East Goes West is flawed, it is still remarkable in its aspirations and achievements. The passion for literature that sustained Kang in his youth stands out against the ruins of his life, forcing a closer look at the lessons of this first generation of Korean immigrants. “To me literature is the most important of all the arts,” Kang would say in 1941. “Good literature cannot be destroyed. A hundred years from now people who read American history to learn about the Roosevelt Administration will not have the whole truth. They will find more truth in Dreiser or Sinclair Lewis, for literature alone can give the emotional side of human beings” (134). Certainly, Kang’s depiction of urban centers like New York through the eyes of Chungpa Han makes for a richly entertaining and informative account of the cosmopolitan subculture of immigrants in the twenties and thirties. Kang’s portrait of the small urban Korean community on the East Coast, driven by nationalism while scrambling to sustain a livelihood on the margins of the mainstream, is probably the only literary account of its kind from that time.

  The significance of East Goes West extends far beyond mere historical documentation, however: it is a portrait of one man’s journey through idealism, in all its complexity and contradictions, its difficulties and unique pleasures. Kang is not, and perhaps never imagined himself to be, a visionary writer. In many ways, he is still
very much a product of his times. But he is also a man of undeniable insight. So, for example, while his portrait of African Americans relies largely on popular stereotypes—invoking in one instance the “flamboyant lazy magic of disintegration” of “Negro jazz” (2:18) and in another, the “Negro humor which found some funny side in lack of dignity, in losing face” (2:72)—his assessment of their situation in relation to his was remarkably astute. The image of imminent lynching at the end of the book is just as potent a premonition of the urban riots of today as it is a reference to the racial unrest of the time. It is as a record of one man’s response to the world around him—of his questing intelligence—that Kang’s work transcends the shuttered expectations of his own time.

  Out of print for much of the past fifty years and all but un-anthologized, the impact of Kang’s books on American and Asian American literature has been largely limited to the influence he had on people such as Carlos Bulosan, the pioneering Filipino American writer. Bulosan, who published his own account of immigrant life, America Is in the Heart, in 1946, credits Kang as an inspiration: “I returned to the writers of my time for strength. And I found Younghill Kang, a Korean who had immigrated to the United States as a boy and worked his way up until he had become a professor at an American university. . . . But it was his indomitable courage that rekindled in me a fire of hope. Why could I not succeed as Younghill Kang had?” (143:265).

  Kang’s failures are as much a part of his legacy as his successes, however. Kang saw himself as unique, apart from the rest—the Korean who could become an American through force of will, the Asian immigrant who could sustain a career as a successful writer—but his life is, in its hopes and disappointments, actually the life of many first-generation immigrants who come to this country and find themselves disillusioned and alone. The lessons he learned are worth remembering: The “Oriental Yankee” of East Goes West’s subtitle might read as an antiquated version of today’s term “Asian American,” but “The Making of an Oriental Yankee” is in fact that process of deconstruction—of simplistic nationalism, of naive faith in America’s gleaming promise, of a stable, color-blind identity—that is implicit in the construction of a new sense of home.

  Proof of Kang’s singular abilities—his perceptive eye, his acrobatic talent for mediation—ultimately comes not from his inclusion on a guest list, but from the writing and publication of East Goes West itself. In his book, if not in his life, Kang emerges as the singular writer and poet that it was his greatest ambition to become. The story is there, for anyone to read.

  SUNYOUNG LEE

  This essay—and this reprint—would never have been possible without the contributions of Juliana Koo, whose editorial insight, thoughtfulness, and commitment are always an inspiration. Thanks also to Lawrence Chua, for his ever-incisive comments and suggestions.

  1. The citations refer to the suggestions for further reading (at the front of this book; this page), which assigns each source a number. The source number is followed by a page number when appropriate. References to The Grass Roof are taken from Follett’s 1959 reprint. References to East Goes West are from this edition. Materials not in the bibliography are listed in these notes.

  2. As a result of the Naturalization Act of 1790, only “free whites” were able to become citizens of the United States. This and subsequent laws and interpretations by courts excluded Asian immigrants from voting and owning property as well.

  3. “I’m still in Korea,” Kang wrote his editor at Scribner’s, Maxwell Perkins, on January 1, 1947. “I don’t enjoy myself very much. Thirty million frustrated, confused, and humiliated Koreans are trying to become a nation. The only excuse for the continued presence of Americans in Korea is to help prepare the Korean people for their promised independence. The steps in accomplishing this mission are clear: we are getting nowhere” (147).

  4. The clearest allusion to a future for Chungpa and Trip occurs in the still very ambiguous lines: “With the expanding spring, the flower of our relationship was to bloom fuller and fuller, containing seed of all our future days . . .” (2:358).

  5. To find clues to Kang’s life in his books, it is useful to study those portions that he explicitly claimed as autobiography—for example, in sketches such as “Oriental Yankee,” published in Common Ground in 1941.

  6. A particularly snide review that ran in the Times Literary Supplement explicitly states: “[Kang’s] autobiography is of great length, and yet it is told in an artless way that makes it rather fascinating” (98).

  7. Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel, introduction by Maxwell Perkins (1922; New York: Scribner’s–Simon & Schuster, 1995), xv.

  8. Wolfe, xii–xiii.

  9. Perkins’ view of The Grass Roof can be seen in a draft of the recommendation letter he wrote for Kang’s 1931 Guggenheim Foundation fellowship application. “[The Grass Roof] makes the Western reader feel at one with the Oriental characters.” The next line is visible through Perkins’ penciled cross out: “Generally they seem to be hopelessly alien and incomprehensible” (147).

  10. Of the New York Times book review describing East Goes West as “not a novel,” Perkins writes: “The first really adequate review we have had” (147: October 14, 1937).

  11. Much has been made of Perkins’ suggestions that Kang cut descriptions of “the frivolous Easterners” in early drafts of East Goes West. Taken in the context of the correspondence as a whole, it becomes clear that Perkins’ comments have more to do with his assessment of Kang in terms of commerce rather than art—and thus with keeping the manuscript within an acceptable, or publishable, length—than with attempts to censor Kang. Perkins might not have been sufficiently visionary to ascertain the potential value of Kang’s portraits of Koreans for future generations, but on the basis of his brief notes to Kang, it is difficult to assert that he manipulated the original text without Kang’s approval (147).

  12. The eventual title and subtitle of the book, East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee, were the result of a collaborative brainstorm by Thomas Wolfe and Maxwell Perkins (and presumably Kang). Perkins originally suggested “The Americanization of Younghill Kang” and “Rebirth in America” (the former giving further indication of how Perkins hoped to package Kang’s book) while Wolfe’s first offerings were “Yankee Out of Korea” and “Oriental Yankee” (147: April 5, 1937).

  13. Thomas Carlyle, from Sartor Resartus, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 5th ed. (New York: Norton, 1986), 964–65.

  14. Carlyle, 970.

  15. Carlyle, 984–85.

  16. Carlyle, 984.

  17. Ever pragmatic despite his extremely romantic views on love, Jum notes that: “‘The wages of a good cook are $50 a week with board, room and laundry. Better than a bank clerk or a college instructor, you will find. And it’s much better money than when I was an ambassador for the Korean government in Washington, D.C.’” (2:35).

  18. In its dead-pan portrayal of the attitudes goading such opportunism along, the Senzar episode also gives a sadly accurate commentary on the condition of some multicultural interactions—two colored folk duking it out over the same tiny scrap of privilege while an appreciative audience looks on.

  19. A passage in East Goes West describing the battle of the wills between a professor of Greek and Vidol, a Siamese classmate of Han’s, is a useful indication of the rationale behind such literary dissimulation. Whenever Vidol is called on by the professor, he refuses to admit that he hasn’t done his homework, saying instead that he can’t remember the answer: “[B]efore such alien falsehood, the professor lost all control; he would grow white and shake with fury. It was an obsession with him to break down Vidol, to force him to confess he was not telling the truth.” Han interprets Vidol’s stubbornness to another friend:

  “Of course, the East does not put the same emphasis upon the words of fact as the West,” I tried to explain. “A gentleman says what is respectable and
decent to say. No doubt Vidol really means ‘I ought to have read.’”

  Han portrays this attitude as an East/West dichotomy, but as used by Kang, it can be read as a kind of strategy—an indication of what to expect from Han himself (2:175).

  A later discussion of race with Wagstaff further justifies such a tactic: “‘They say that Negroes always lie. Why shouldn’t they?’” Wagstaff asks.

  “They must lie to exist. They see around them a world of lies, a cruel unfriendly world from birth, where they are gyped because of color. There is only one philosophy that can come from that. It will not be ‘honesty is the best policy’ or any lie like that. Learn the language of gyp, learn to gyp too. Confess honestly that right isn’t might, but might is right, always since the world began.”

  Likewise, Kang realizes that he could never hope to pass in society by remaining completely honest. His use of Han as a mask becomes less a matter of deception than an instinct for self-preservation (2:270).

  20. This promise is articulated by Senator Kirby, one of Han’s road companions. He says: “‘Now you must definitely make up your mind to be American. Don’t say, “I’m a Korean” when you’re asked. Say “I’m an American.”’” When Han observes, “‘But an Oriental has a hard time in America. He is not welcomed much. . . . legally I am denied,’” Kirby comes back with: “‘There shouldn’t be any buts about it! Believe in America with all your heart. Even if it’s sometimes hard, believe in her’” (2:346).