Department of Far Eastern Art in New York. He
also obtained a position as a lecturer in the Eng-
lish department at New York University, where
he befriended Thomas Wolfe. At the time, Kang
was working on The GRASS ROOF, which describes
Kang’s life in Korea up to the point of his depar-
ture for the West in 1921. Wolfe read four chap-
ters of the book and then took it to his own editor
at Charles Scribner’s Sons, which published it in
- Translated into French, German, and other
languages, The Grass Roof won the French Prix
Halperine Kaminsky in 1937. Between 1933 and
1935, Kang went to Germany and Italy on a Gug-
genheim Award in Creative Literature. The success
of his first book led to the 1933 publication of The
Happy Grove, a children’s book based on the first
part of The Grass Roof, accompanied by a number
of illustrations. In 1937 Scribner’s published EAST
GOES WEST: THE MAKING OF AN ORIENTAL YANKEE,
annals of his experiences in America.
Kang lived in genteel poverty with his wife and
three children in a Long Island farmhouse over-
flowing with books. Always in demand as a visit-
ing lecturer, he was nevertheless unable to obtain a
stable teaching position. Instead, he traveled from
one speaking engagement to another in an old
Buick, astonishing Rotary Club audiences with his
recitations of Hamlet’s soliloquies or his lectures
on Korea. He is said to have commented that it
was his great misfortune that Pearl Buck’s Pulit-
zer Prize–winning novel about China, The Good
Earth, was published in the same year as The Grass
Roof, eclipsing his own tale of Asia.
For a brief period after World War II, Kang
served as chief of publications under the U.S. oc-
cupational forces in Korea. He received the Louis
S. Weiss Memorial Prize in 1953 and an honor-
ary doctorate in literature from Korea University
in 1970. Among the 5,000 books he donated to
Korea University, Kang included an unpublished
play of his entitled “Kongmin Wang [King Kong-
min]” (1960s), also known as “Murder in the Royal
Palace,” a version of which was performed in the
United States in 1964. In 1970 Kang also published
in Korea ill-reputed translations of Korean litera-
ture including Yongwoon Han’s Meditations of the
Lover. Hospitalized in New York for postoperative
hemorrhaging after a massive stroke, Kang died in
Florida in December 1972.Bibliography
Kang, Younghill. East Goes West: The Making of an
Oriental Yankee. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1937. Chicago: Follett, 1965. New York: Kaya
Productions, 1997.
———. The Grass Roof. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1931. Chicago: Follett, 1966.
———. The Happy Grove. New York: Charles Scrib-
ner’s Sons, 1933.
SuMee LeeKeller, Nora Okja (1965– )
A significant voice in American literature, Keller
is deeply committed to her craft and to shedding
light on issues affecting women, especially women
of Korean heritage, which have historically been
shrouded in silence and regarded with shame.
Born in Seoul, Korea, to a Korean mother and a
German-American father, Keller makes her home
with her husband and two daughters in Hawaii.
While issues of ethnic identity and marginaliza-
tion inform Keller’s literary work, her own experi-
ence of growing up was markedly different from
that of her protagonists. “One of the best things
about Hawaii,” notes Keller, “is that the majority of
people are mixed race in some way or another, so I
grew up where that was the norm” (Keller, MELUS
146). Indeed, despite her diverse heritage, she de-
clares that she “never felt singled out and looked
at as a mixed-race hapa girl” (Keller, identity the-
ory). Nevertheless, Keller was aware, particularly
as a teenager, of her often conflicting identities,
choosing to align herself more strongly with her
acquired American self and rejecting most aspects
of her mother’s Korean heritage. It was not until
she attended the University of Hawaii to study
English and psychology and encountered the
Asian-American literary tradition that she began
to feel the need to understand and connect to her
Korean-American identity.Keller, Nora Okja 145