East Goes West

by Younghill Kang

  “Our Culture Likened to China’s in 800 B.C.; Dr. Kang Sees Economic State Only Difference.” New York Times, October 11, 1931, sec. 2: 1.

  Young, A. A., and Teague, T. J. “Mrs. Buck and the Chinese.” Two letters concerning Kang’s review of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. [July 1, 1931: 185] New Republic, January 6, 1932: 219.

  Unpublished Material in Collections

  Scribner’s archives. Letters to and concerning Younghill Kang by Maxwell Perkins and others, 1930–1962. Also contains letters from Younghill Kang and inventory records for East Goes West and The Grass Roof. Princeton University: Princeton, New Jersey.

  Guggenheim Foundation files. Letters from and concerning Younghill Kang’s Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, 1932–1955. Also includes applications, clippings, lecture notices, correspondence, and other materials pertaining to Kang and his work. New York.

  Huntington Historical Society files. Archived materials about Younghill Kang. Includes photographs, original manuscripts, and articles about Kang and his work. Huntington, New York.

  Chronology

  THE LIFE AND WORK OF YOUNGHILL KANG

  This chronology has been assembled from writings that Kang himself explicitly claimed as autobiography (articles, letters, applications) and secondary biographical sources. The dates are as accurate as possible, given Kang’s sometimes vague account of the number of years he spent in a particular place or his age at the time of a particular event. Several irresolvable inconsistencies that exist in Kang’s own chronology of his life have been noted. Among the facts of Kang’s life that remain unclear: when exactly he died and when his youngest son, Robert, was born.

  1903 The son of a farmer, Younghill Kang is born on May 10th in Song-Dune-Chi (“Village of Pine Trees”), Hamkyung Province—“a sheltered, beautiful valley some 300 miles north of Seoul” (38:110).1

  Kang proves his intellectual promise by becoming fluent in Korean and Chinese classics.

  1910 On August 29, Korea is formally declared annexed by decree of the Japanese government.

  Shortly thereafter, Kang witnesses the beating of his grandmother by Japanese police. She eventually dies from injuries sustained in this attack. His uncle is imprisoned on false conspiracy charges; while in jail, he is tortured and permanently crippled.

  1914 Against the wishes of his father, Kang leaves the countryside and travels to Seoul in search of further education. He makes the 300 mile journey over 16 days on foot with the equivalent of 3 dollars.

  1915 Kang leaves Seoul for Japan. “I knew the Japanese language and tried to study the Western science. I found the Japs did not allow it to be taught in Korea. I wanted to go to America, but had no money or means to get there. First, I saw, I must go to Japan, among my enemies, to learn the Western science. I bought the clothes of a Japanese boy and stowed away on a boat for Japan” (38:110).

  1916–18 Attends Youngsaing [probably a high school], graduating in 1918.

  1918 Works as a math instructor in Kobe, Japan.

  1918–19 Returns to his hometown and then to Seoul. In 1919, Kang takes part in the March 1st Independence March, a nonviolent mass protest of Japanese occupation that was calculated to put “the Korean people on the record before a world court as claiming their right to their own independence” (34:13). He is, as a result, beaten and imprisoned by Japanese police.2 He would later report that according to Japan’s own records, they imprisoned 50,000 Koreans and killed 7000 (34:30).

  Kang publishes essays and poems in Korean, and an article by him is printed in a Korean newspaper.

  1920 Kang assists Mrs. H. H. Underwood in the translation of work by John Bunyan. He also translates poems by Browning, Keats, and Shakespeare into Chinese and Korean.

  Attempts to escape to the West through Siberia, but is caught by Japanese agents, beaten, and given another prison term.

  1921 Through the help of a missionary, who smuggles him out of Korea as a servant, Kang immigrates to the United States.3

  Kang goes to Canada to attend Dalhousie, a Nova Scotian missionary college, on a scholarship.

  1922 Attends Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  1923–25 Pursues studies at a Boston university and graduates with a Bachelor of Science.4

  1924–27 Continues writing in Korean and Japanese. Of this time, he later writes: “When I went to college in America, I meant to study in some definite field of science, as being most valuable to myself and most serviceable to society. I found myself very unhappy and I did not feel at home in the laboratory. The only subject that gave me relief and delight was literature and poetry, read and re-read and unconsciously memorized in the solitary room. Writing was forced upon me, since I could not find my peace anywhere else” (127:744).

  1925–27 Resumes studies at Harvard, graduating with a Masters in English Education.

  1926 Works for the Chinese Commission at the Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia.

  1928 Begins to write primarily in English.

  Kang spends the summer with the family of his fiancée, Frances Keely, a graduate of Wellesley College and a poet. They are married on the lawn of her grandmother’s family home in West Virginia.

  Hired to work on the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Kang acquires and edits pieces on Asian art and literature in addition to writing over 100 signed and unsigned articles. Kang later credits this work as helping him to acculturate to the West.

  1928–29 Begins writing what would become his first autobiographical novel, The Grass Roof.

  During this time, Kang also works as a contributing editor to the Korean Student Bulletin, a monthly periodical of Korean and Korean American news, and writes articles for the Review of Reviews.

  1929 Begins work as a lecturer in the Comparative Literature Department of New York University. In September, Kang meets fellow freshman English teacher, Thomas Wolfe. Kang would later say of Wolfe that “He was one of my best friends in America, although my association with him was only about ten years. . . . There were about 75 teachers of English in the Department . . . and it was hard to know them well. . . . But Tom Wolfe often invited me to come to his apartment near the University, and we talked about many things including Shakespeare, Milton, and modern authors” (67: 31 Aug. 1957).

  Translations of Oriental Poetry is published by Prentice-Hall in New York. Kang also publishes an article in the New York–based Korean Nationalist Weekly entitled “Why I am Studying Literature.”

  1929–30 Publishes articles in the Saturday Review of Literature, New York Herald Tribune, and Kidok-Shinmun (in Korean). He also continues to contribute essays, poems, and book reviews to the Korean Student Bulletin.

  1930 His daughter, Lucy Lynn, is born.

  Kang’s first autobiographical novel, The Grass Roof, is contracted by Scribner’s: “[Wolfe] was very much interested in my work and asked me to read it. I gave him the first four chapters, which he took to Maxwell Perkins of Charles Scribner’s Sons. Perkins was [Wolfe’s] editor for Look Homeward Angel, which came out that fall. From that time on we often had lunch at . . . the same place where he always came in for lunch with Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald (whenever they were in the city) and many other writers. My first book was accepted by Perkins with $500 advance” (67: 31 Aug. 1957). With the publication of this book, Kang becomes “the first Korean novelist ever to be introduced to the English speaking world” (124:3).

  1931 The Grass Roof is published. The book is favorably reviewed in a number of prominent journals and papers, and praised by Pearl S. Buck and H. G. Wells among others. In a review that ran in the New York Post, Thomas Wolfe would write: “Kang is a born writer, everywhere he is free and vigorous: he has an original and poetic mind, and he loves life” (138).

  Gaining wider recognition as a scholar of Asian culture, Kang continues to lecture and
publish book reviews, articles, and autobiographical portraits in a number of newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, New Republic, Nation, Asia Magazine, and New York Evening Post.

  1931 Applies unsuccessfully for a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, proposing to write a sequel to The Grass Roof to be called “Death of an Exile.”

  1932 In October, Kang resubmits his application to the Guggenheim Foundation.

  1933 The Happy Grove, a children’s book based on the first part of The Grass Roof, is published by Scribner’s.

  Das Grasdach, a German translation of The Grass Roof, is published by Hesse & Becker in Leipzig.

  A Hollywood agent inquires about motion picture rights to The Grass Roof, citing MGM’s production of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth as proof of the “considerable interest being shown at present in Chinese stories” (147 [letter from Adeline M. Alvord, authors’ and producers’ representative, to Scribner’s]: 6 Sept. 1933).

  In the spring of this year, Kang receives notice that his Guggenheim application was accepted. He becomes the first Asian to ever receive a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. He is given a stipend of $1800 to be used towards writing a novel abroad. In September, Kang sets up residence in Rome with his wife and baby daughter.

  1934 Kang requests and is granted a six-month renewal of his Guggenheim fellowship, stating that he plans to finish his book by February of 1935. Leaving Rome, he eventually settles with his family in Munich. He later writes: “In Germany I was more popular than the high-nosed American in the Hitler thirties, because I could be mistaken for a Japanese, the only race descended from the gods outside of the Aryans” (66:2).

  1935 Returns to the United States.

  The Grass Roof is translated into French as Au Pays du Matin Calme by Librairie Plon in Paris.

  1937 East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee is published by Scribner’s.

  Au Pays du Matin Calme wins Le Prix Halperine Kaminsky, France’s annual award for best book in translation.

  In November, an interview with Kang and dramatic readings of several passages from East Goes West are aired on WHN in New York City.

  His son Christopher is born.

  Kang is promoted to the position of Assistant Professor at New York University’s Washington Square College.

  1939 Begins working part time as an assistant curator in the Department of Far Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art while continuing to teach at New York University.

  World War II begins.

  On July 10th, Representative Kent E. Keller of Illinois and the Committee on Citizenship for Younghill Kang, headed by the novelist John Chamberlain, introduce a bill to the House (H.R. 7127) that seeks to naturalize Kang. Congressman Keller argues that “[The exclusion law] was [passed] for the purpose of preventing the competition with American labor and not with American scholarship. Therefore, it is out of keeping with the American spirit to have this law operate against a man who has through his own genius written some fine books and become a teacher of English in a great University. There was no such thought that anything like that would ever happen and therefore the law has no moral force and should not be applied in the case of Younghill Kang. . . . If we grant citizenship to Younghill Kang, it will liberate and finally completely free a mind unusual in its grasp of America and American ideals” (112).

  The bill includes statements of support by a number of prominent literary and cultural figures: among them, Malcolm Cowley, Pearl S. Buck, Lewis Mumford, Nicholas Murray Butler, William Lyon Phelps, Maxwell Perkins, and Charles Scribner. Perkins is instrumental in rounding up signatures and support letters for Kang, though one senator confides that such a bill would never pass, citing a similar citizenship bid by Thomas Mann that had ended in defeat. A second bill is introduced by Senator Matthew M. Neely of West Virginia to the Senate (S. 2801). Editorials are written to various newspapers asking readers to call their congressmen to support the bills.

  1940 In a newspaper interview concerning the bills for his citizenship, Kang comments, “‘Whether my bills now pending in Congress concerning my status are approved or not . . . this is my country. I married an American, have two children born here. All my roots are here, and I must do everything in my power for America. . . . My one desire is to serve this, my country, when the time comes’” (125). Both bills are eventually rejected.

  1941 After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, Kang is called by the U.S. War Department. He gives up his professorship at New York University, as well as his curatorial work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and works for the U.S. Army and other government agencies, “doing whatever I could for the war effort” (66).

  During the war, Kang would publish several anti-Japanese propaganda articles, including “The Japanese Mind Is Sick,” “An Appeal from Tyranny to God,” and “When the Japs March In.”

  1942 Kang works as Director of the Army’s Japanese Language School for 10 weeks over the summer, as well as Orientation Lecturer for the Public Relations Division of the U.S. Army.

  1943 Works as Principal Economic Analyst for the Korea and Manchuria Section of the Board of Economic Warfare in Washington, D.C.

  1944 Works as a language consultant to the Education Division of the U.S. Army in New York City. Also compiles and edits the Japanese Phrase Book for the army language unit.

  The Grass Roof continues to sell steadily, though it goes out of stock for several years because of wartime paper shortages.

  East Goes West goes out of print.

  1945 World War II ends. Korea is promised independence but is divided at the 38th parallel. As the Soviets had already done in North Korea, the United States erects a military government south of the 38th parallel. Kang would later write: “The 38th parallel is . . . Korea’s dead line. Korea’s life and blood circulation was stopped on that line and could not flow from either direction . . .” (66:2).

  1946 A contract is renewed for the reprint of a Czech edition of The Grass Roof, originally published before the war.

  1946–47 Travels to Korea as Chief of Publications for the American Military Government’s (USAGMIK) Office of Public Information. “I was always safe from the terrorists and the Japanese-trained Korean police, as others were not, because of my immunity with A.O. cards. On the other hand all types of Koreans with different political shades would tell me things they felt too ashamed or embarassed [sic] to tell my American colleagues. . . . With these advantages I was naturally able to gather a good deal of information on Korea, on the way things were going, making out my report like amny [sic] other to generals” (66).

  While in Korea, Kang lectures at Kyongsong University. His experiences in Korea provide him with material for the provocative essay, “How It Feels to Be a Korean . . . in Korea,” published in U.N. World (May 1948). “If the reactionary politicians do not ruin South Korea, inflation almost surely will,” he writes. “Certainly if an honest secret election could be held in South Korea today . . . the victor would have the difficult task of reviving a people and an economy that have been all but starved by being fed on money, all but deathly poisoned with graft, corruption and terror” (28:21).

  In a May 3, 1947, letter to Perkins, Kang writes: “General Hodges has made The Grass Roof required reading for every G.I. in Korea” (147: 3 May 1947).

  1947–48 Works as a political analyst and advisor to the XXIV Corps Office of Civil Information.

  Serves as President of Tongyang Waeguko College.

  With his wife, Kang finishes a translation of Han Yongwoon’s Meditations of the Lover, the first Korean book of poetry to be translated as a whole into English.

  1948 Returns to the United States. He teaches summer sessions at New York University without tenure until 1953, and continues his lecture tours.

  Meditations of the Lover is rejected by Scribner’s.

  1950–53 The Korean War takes place. I
n its aftermath, the country remains divided at the 38th parallel. Kang’s restless anxiety in the face of these events makes it difficult for him to reacculturate to American life. He will write later of his conflicting feelings: “It is natural for me to love America and to fight for her, it is natural for me to love Korea. Why then this conflict? It is strange for man to have more conflict when . . . he has sought two sides of the story. How well I see, had I known only one side of the story, the American side, I would feel differently! I know why the U.N. or Mr. Truman has done what has been done. But I also know we have spent millions and lives and created enemies in Korea. . . . What is it they fight? communism? democracy? both are alien enough ideologies. In the hands of a few leaders these rally-cries are about like longitude and latitude to Alice, grand words to use in Wonderland, but to the average Korean what do they mean? The typical Korean is a hunted uneducated farmer. One thing makes him go mad, that 38th parallel, separating parent from child, husband from wife. . . . Whichever the force won this war from without shall lose it politically. The operation was a success, but the patient died—it’s that kind of success” (66).

  1950 Yale University asks Kang to survey the East Asiatic collection in the Sterling Memorial Library and to recommend additions to the book collection.

  1950–51 Serves as a visiting professor at the Asia Institute in New York.

  1952 Lectures as an English professor at Long Island University at Oyster Bay, New York.

  1953 Receives the Louis S. Weiss Memorial Prize in Adult Education from the New School. A notice announcing the award writes of Kang: “He has brought about in his own mind and heart a fusion of forces which in the world at large are still fighting one another. A patriot without provincialism, a lover of freedom without prejudice or pretense, he has made his personal life a model of achievement under adversity and described it movingly for all of us to share. As a poet, a writer and teacher remaining whole and wise in a divided world, he has proved himself a great adult educator” (111).