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Younghill Kang and Richard Wright by Byung Sun Yu a Dissertation America(s) in Early Twentieth Century Ethnic Minority Writing: Younghill Kang and Richard Wright By Byung Sun Yu A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Elaine Kim, Chair Professor Sau-ling Wong Professor Marcial González Fall 2013 ABSTRACT America(s) in Early Twentieth Century Ethnic Minority Writing: Younghill Kang and Richard Wright by Byung Sun Yu Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Elaine Kim, Chair In this dissertation, I explore the meanings of “America(s)” in the fictional works by early twentieth century ethnic minority writers—Younghill Kang and Richard Wright. They reveal the heterogeneity of America as opposed to the myth of America as a singular formation. I attempt to approach American racialized ethnic minority literature comparatively, to avoid the limitations of focusing on writers of one background. Comparative approaches account for the particular social, cultural, historical, political, and geographical contingencies of different ethnic groups. In the first chapter on Younghill Kang’s East Goes West, I argue that America is a reified society, which is very different from the society Kang has dreamed for a long time. Analyzing Kang’s autobiographical novel East Goes West, I employ the theoretical frame of “reification” to explore the social structure that prevents Han, Kang’s alter ego, from being accepted as an American no matter how ardently he wishes for acceptance. I argue that though he criticizes a reified American society such as rationalization, quantification, and objectification, his criticism of the society is based on an anachronistic organic romanticism. In the second chapter, I focus on the notions of ‘whiteness’ and ‘spatial logic’ in considering the America of Richard Wright’s Native Son. For Wright, America is a place where whiteness is omnipresent. Whiteness, as the privileged signifier, always reminds African Americans of the power and control that hangs over them. The logic of whiteness powerfully influences the lives of African Americans by excluding them. Also, I argue that it has much to do with logic of space, which defines and determines the fatal social relationships of the protagonist Bigger Thomas’s life and his limited political consciousness. Also, I scrutinize the relationship between Richard Wright and the Communist Party of USA. In the process, I address the issue of race and class. In conclusion, I examine several commonalities and differences between Kang and Wright. １ DEDICATION To my late father, who raised six children with love and care, working as a fisherman in a small village during his life. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible were it not for the support and care of Professor Elaine Kim. Literally, with her expert guidance and kind help, I have been able to finish this dissertation. She even visited Korea several times and encouraged me to finish what I have begun. I still have not found the proper words to express my deepest gratitude for her. I also want to thank Professor Sau-ling Wong, who was enormously generous in taking the time to read all manuscripts closely and offer productive suggestions for revision. Furthermore, I am especially grateful to Professor Marcial Gonzalez, whose insight and the depth of scholarship provided me with numerous of ideas about this dissertation. I cannot forget how amazing his seminar class was. It was one of the best classes I had attended in U.C. Berkeley. I wish to thank my mother, Ok-Kyu Chung for her unconditional love and sacrifice. My thanks are extended to my six nephews as well—Jaemin, Jaehyun, Sangjun, Sangho, Jaewon, and Jaehyuk. I hope all of my nephews will survive happily in the jungle called capitalism. Lastly, I want to express my deepest love to my two boys, Seongmin and Sunjae, and to their mother Hyun Sun. It certainly has been a long journey to the finish. Much has happened in the process of writing this dissertation. I hope there will only be happy stories to tell in the future. ii INTRODUCTION Looking back at the 1930s from the 1960s, Lionel Trilling observed: In any view of the American cultural situation, the importance of the radical movement of the Thirties cannot be overestimated. It may be said to have created the American intellectual class as we now know it in its great size and influence. It fixed the character of this class as being, through all mutations of opinion, predominantly of the Left. And quite apart from opinion, the political tendency of the Thirties defined the style of the class from that radicalism came the moral urgency, the sense of crisis, and the concern with personal salvation that mark the existence of American intellectuals. The importance of the 1930s is further stressed when Michael Denning, referring to Trilling, states that “whether we think of culture as the norms, values, belies, and ways of life of particular groups of people or in a more limited sense, as the texts, artifacts, and performances,” the 1930s, especially the age of the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), marked the first time in the history of the United States the left—the tradition of radical democratic movements for social transformation—had a central, indeed shaping, impact on American culture.1 In 1933 and 1934, nation-wide strikes were called all across U.S. industries. “A new militancy and solidarity among American workers appeared as the battles of San Francisco’s longshoremen, Minneapolis’s teamsters, and Toledo’s auto-parts workers won the allegiance of citizens. General strikes brought each city to a halt, figuring a cooperative commonwealth.”2 During these years of general strikes, young writers proclaimed themselves “proletarians” and “revolutionaries.” Richard Wright later stated the revolutionary “workers’ struggle” in the early 1930s brought him into direct contact with the Communist Party.3Also, Carlos Bulosan wrote of a lettuce strike in Lompoc, “The strike taught me that I was definitely a part of the labor movement…from this day onward my life became one long conspiracy…I was so intensely fired by this dream of a better America that I had completely forgotten myself.”4 Denning reminds us that through such strikes based on class struggle, a new radical culture was shaped. He defines this culture as a “cultural front,” at the heart of which was a new generation of plebian artists and intellectuals who had grown up in the immigrant and black working class neighborhoods of the modern metropolis. They 1 Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1996), 3. 2 Ibid., xiv. 3 Gabriel Mendes, “A Deeper Science: Richard Wright, Dr. Fredric Wertham, and the Fight for Mental Healthcare in Harlem, NY, 1940-1960” (Ph. D. diss. Brown University, 2010), 19. 4 Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, xiv. iii were the second generation of the second wave of immigration, along with African Americans who had migrated from South to North.”5Writers such as Richard Wright, Carlos Bulosan, Tillie Olsen, Thomas Bell, Toshio Mori, and Clifford Odets, and critics like Philip Rahv, Alfred Kazan, and Irving Howe were among the members of the cultural front movement.6 Louis Adamic called them “new Americans.”7They formed proletarian literary clubs and published proletarian stories and poems in little magazines such as Blast, Anvil, Partisan Review, Left Front, and Dynamo.8 During the 1930s and 1940s, one of the main issues among left groups was how to define contemporary America. The issue was foregrounded when American Communist Party general secretary Earl Browder campaigned for the party’s presidency in 1936 using the slogan “communism is twentieth-century Americanism.” Browder advocated extending the hand of “fellowship and cooperation to Republicans, Democrats and Socialists, as well as to those of no party at all,” calling for everyone to work together “to defend culture, to unite culture with the strivings of the people, to preserve and extend our democratic heritage, to assist our brothers in other lands who are suffering the bestial assaults of fascism.”9 This dissertation explores the meanings of “America(s)” in the fictional works by the two ethnic minority writers—Younghill Kang and Richard Wright—as they reveal the heterogeneity of America as opposed to the myth of America as a singular formation. I approach American racialized ethnic minority literature comparatively, to avoid the limitations of focusing on writers of one background. Comparative approaches account for the particular social, cultural, historical, political, and geographical contingencies of different ethnic groups. The emancipatory message of the1930s and 1940s literary leftism and radicalism still retains much of its force. As long as inequality and exploitation based on race, class, gender, nation, and sexuality exist, egalitarian social movements will exist. If people who associate themselves with progressive values and notions do not accept that, Barbara Foley suggests, selfishness is “original sin,” leading the efforts of creating truly egalitarian societies to failure. People must instead understand where movements within such attempts spring forth from.10 In the work of Kang and Wright, we can see the intersectionality of race and class, a focal point of contemporary cultural and ethnic studies. However, the works of these writers are not proletarian literature in traditional terms in that they do not address class consciousness as a core rhetorical and thematic representation and they do not illuminate why Marxism constructs class dually as a subject position and a moment in the historical dialectic.11 Instead, I locate them in 5 Ibid., 60-61. 6 Ibid., 60.
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