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Depictions of Koreans in American Literature”

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Depictions of Koreans in American Literature” Kichung Kim: Filling In the Blank “Filling In the Blank: Depictions of Koreans in American Literature” Kichung Kim I began my research as soon as I was asked to look into “How Koreans are depicted in American and Korean American literature.” I searched the Internet under a number of headings including, “Koreans in American literature,” but found little directly related to my topic. Only when I broadened my search as “Koreans in America,” did I get more promising leads to a number of bibliographies. But even these leads produced little of what I was looking for, depictions of Koreans in American literature. Assisted by librarians in San Jose and San Francisco, I found more bibliographies. Finally I turned to a friend in Seoul who specializes in the study of Korean American literature, and he referred me to American Images Of Korea by Craig S. Coleman. In his survey of approximately 2000 Americans between 1988 and l997 on their image of Korea and Koreans, Coleman found that the respondents‟ initial response to even simple questions about Korea and Koreans was “shocked silence” and “intellectual emptiness.” The top 20 images of Korea and Koreans, according to Coleman, by the respondents following their initial “shocked silence” were: “Hardworking Kimchi/spicy Food/Korean BBQ Strong Economy/Trade Aggressive/Rude/Negative Personality Family Oriented Taekwondo/Martial Arts Korean War DMZ/38th Parallel/Divided Country 1988 Seoul Olympics M*A*S*H Student and Labor Demonstrations/Riots L.A. Riots Koreatown/Korean American Small Business Owners Hyundai/Kia Automobiles North Korean Terrorism/Nuclear Weapons Issue North Korean Famine/Economic Difficulties Short/Dark Oriental People Eat Dog Meat Colorful Traditional Clothing 1 Kichung Kim: Filling In the Blank Poor/Backward Nation” 1 Most Americans, Coleman concludes, regardless of their level of education or occupation, possess very little factual knowledge of Korea or Koreans, little more than what was “printed on a single page in [their] U.S. or world history textbooks covering the Korean War.”2 What this paucity of knowledge about Korea and Koreans on the part of most Americans suggests is that historically Korea and Koreans had been of little concern to the American public, and that for most Americans Korea had not been part of what they knew of the world, since Korea and its people had been largely outside their conscious knowledge. It is not, therefore, difficult to understand why Koreans had been rarely depicted in American literature before the advent of Korean American writers. It was Korean American writers, starting with Younghill Kang, who began gradually to fill in what had been mostly a blank in American literature with serious, in-depth depictions of Koreans in America.3 For this presentation I have selected the following four works of fiction by Korean American writers: Younghill Kang‟s East Goes West (1937); Ronyoung Kim‟s Clay Walls (1987); Chang-rae Lee‟s Native Speaker (1995); and Don Lee‟s Yellow (2001). I chose these works mainly for two reasons. First, I wanted to discuss those works in which the main characters are Koreans living in America, and second I wanted to discuss those works which together would span most of the 20th century from the early to the last decades, for we might discern through them an evolution in literary depictions of Korean Americans. Additionally, since these works are located in both the East and West coasts of the U.S., we may also be able to detect some regional differences in the experience of Koreans living in America. As various as Korean American writers are, so too are their depictions of Korean Americans. Because it would be impossible to detail all the various ways Koreans in America are depicted in Korean American literature, I have decided to focus on one or two thematic concerns in these depictions. As I have mentioned, my discussion is limited to Koreans living in America. In his autobiographical novel, East Goes West (1937), the first significant work of fiction by a Korean American writer, Younghill Kang focuses on the most serious impediment to Koreans‟ entry into American society during the early part of the 20th century, the l920s and 1930s. Every Korean character of this novel, being an “Oriental” in white America, has to confront his and her more or less permanent outsider status in America, consequently experiencing a profound sense of alienation from American society. Put in another way, although he is in America, 2 Kichung Kim: Filling In the Blank he is not of America. To borrow Elaine Kim‟s phrase, his life in America is like that of “a blind man outside the door” looking for “an unlocked doorway into American life.”4 Chungpa Han, the protagonist of the novel, first experiences this outsider status on a college campus in Canada in the form of America‟s racial and cultural hostility toward the “Oriental.” It is his first day at Maritime University in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he is a one-year scholarship student. As he stands alone apart from the other students, he senses the “racial, national and religious homogeneity” all around him, which however clearly excludes him. This feeling of being an outsider to all those standing about him is exacerbated when he overhears one of the students, a “narrow faced, tender-skinned boy with dark eyebrows,” call him “this yellow dog we have to live with,” a deliberate insult obviously meant to be overheard. No wonder, Han says, the first impression he has of his fellow students is “an unforgettable impression of smugness and shut-offness” which he felt was “in the back of the minds of all.”5 This first encounter racism, even though focused on the racial and cultural hostility of a single nasty white youngster, it is significant because it represents the visible tip of what lies hidden below the surface, the pervasive racism and hostility of the larger American society toward “Orientals” during this time. The key to understanding the problem “Orientals” faced in America, as the author sees it, is neatly summed up in an advice Kim, Han‟s friend and mentor in the novel, gives him on how to conduct himself in Boston where Han is working while attending college. In his advice to Han, Kim tells his younger and much less experienced compatriot: “. professors in Boston have great sympathy for any adopted Oriental child. As long as you are willing to be docile and obedient.” 6 So long as an Oriental remains a docile and obedient child, in other words, so long as an “Oriental” does not become grown up and encroach upon matters of real and substantive importance to white America, in other words, so long as he does not challenge white men in economic or social life of white America he will be tolerated. This means, as it develops in the novel, so long as he is satisfied with earning his livelihood doing menial work and stay away from respectable white women, he will be tolerated. The careers of the three central characters in the novel, George Jum, To Wan Kim, and Chungpa Han, illustrate the limits of tolerance white America has set for “Orientals.” As a 2nd generation elderly Korean American woman living in San Francisco recently told me, the first decades of the 20th century were the time in America 3 Kichung Kim: Filling In the Blank when educated Asian men – regardless of their training or education – could get work only as houseboys, valets, waiters, and the like. As Han points out in the novel, in one Chinese restaurant in New York, eight out of nine waiters have either Ph.D.‟s, MA‟s, or BA‟s or BS‟s, and the one without a college degree is an accomplished painter in the Chinese style from Shanghai.7 George Jum, another of Han‟s mentor-friends, has fully accommodated himself to the limits white America set for “Orientals.” Even though he is well educated and fluent in English, he is content to work as a cook just to make enough money to live comfortably and squire around a part-Chinese white woman who is a Harlem night club dancer. He shows he understands well enough the limits of what is tolerated for “Orientals” in white America in his choice of work and of female companionship. By dating a part-Chinese white night club dancer, he knows he is safely within the limits set for an “Oriental,” but even then he doesn‟t escape white censure altogether. When he comes to Boston with his girlfriend, George visits Han, while Han is a lodger in the home of Mr. Lively who employs him as one of an army of ill-paid sales agents peddling worthless encyclopedias door to door. When Mrs. Lively, who professes to be a pious Christian, chances to see George walking in the park with his white looking dancer girlfriend, she is horrified. She complains to Han about his friend‟s unacceptable behavior: “„And I can tell you,‟ she [Mrs. Lively] burst out again, „it is not wise for an Oriental boy to go round with an American girl. He should marry his own kind, and she should marry hers.‟” Mr. Lively, reinforcing her point, tells Han what he thinks of the matter: “My dear boy, see here, I love you just as much as if you were my own boy. But you are getting wrong ideas. I don‟t want to see you marry an American girl. Neither would I want to see Elsie [his daughter] marrying an Oriental. And all decent people are like that. It is not as the Lord intended.” 8 If an “Oriental” consorting with a part-Chinese white night club dancer should cause so much moral consternation, we can easily imagine how much more would have been the disapproval, had the woman been more “respectable.” Such is precisely what befalls To Wan Kim, Han‟s mentor and friend.
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