April 23, 2020 29
his two letters prove useless. A nickel
gets him a space on a basement fl oor,
in what he likens to “a crypt of roughly
piled bodies.” In just forty-eight hours,
he’s gone from Whitmanesque paeans
to a premonition of death. The feeling
of liberation from his old life has been
replaced by the need to adapt. Con-
stant reinvention, he learns, is in the
American grain.
So too does the book reinvent itself.
A rags-to-riches arc dissolves into a
journey through eastern North Amer-
ica. Already steeped in the English
poetic tradition, Chungpa pursues his
“avid desire for Western knowledge”
while he works a succession of jobs.
Educational opportunities, fi nances,
and pure wanderlust compel him to
roam, and the scene shifts from New
York (a humiliating stint as a house-
boy, assistant to a tea importer, waiter
at a Chinese restaurant) to Nova Scotia
and other spots in Canada (college, box
factory, farming), then Boston (pen
salesman, more school, book salesman,
busboy), Philadelphia (department
store), and myriad unnamed points
across the country, eventually return-
ing to Manhattan.
Even as a boy, Chungpa wandered,
as chronicled in The Grass Roof. At
the age of eleven, determined to be a
“big man,” he “wanted to go to Seoul
one day and get this country straight-
ened out.” (“I will drive out all those
Japanese.”) In Seoul at last, after a
grueling solo journey, he writes home:
“I am not going to send any more let-
ters until I get more education. There
are no good schools in Seoul.” The grit
offsets his grating precocity: seemingly
from birth, Chungpa is fl uent in classi-
cal Chinese poetry, a hallmark of the
Korean literati. He quotes it at the drop
of a hat, and revels in his destiny as a
future pak-sa, a gentleman scholar.
The looming destruction of his coun-
try by its colonizers ultimately renders
Chungpa heroic, a young man whose
resourcefulness outshines his arro-
gance. What he held as his birthright
gets dashed against political reality:For the fi rst time in my life I could
not make up my mind. After grad-
uation, what? Get a job. Yes, but
in Korea I should have to be a sub-
ordinate of a Japanese, always I
would get one-tenth of that which
a Japanese with the same degree
would get, I could never become a
pak-sa for there were no more pak-
sas and a Korean premier did not
exist.... If I went back to Korea,
and returned to become a villager
for always, was that any fun? Why
should I keep on to manufacture
babies for which there could be no
future? I saw what Japan’s policy
toward Korea would be: all who
could not be assimilated would be
slaughtered... and driven away.He fi nally secures passage (and eludes
Japanese offi cials) by accompanying a
widowed American missionary and his
four children, impersonating an “igno-
rant coolie boy.”As a narrator, however, Chungpa is
more charismatic in East Goes West.
When it dawns on him that America is
like nothing he could have imagined,
the comedy kicks in. Reviewers tookThe Grass Roof for straight autobi-
ography, and East Goes West saw the
same fate. Kang’s second book, how-
ever, shows him to be a skilled novel-
ist rather than a simple recorder of his
own life. Kang turns down the volume
on his narrator whenever Chungpa
encounters someone who captures his
curiosity or affection. The novel over-
fl ows with memorable motormouths,
busybodies, sad sacks, and dreamers,
both foreign and domestic, white and
black and “Oriental.” (“I was outside
the two sharp worlds of color in the
American environment,” Chungpa
notes, allowing him to observe his new
countrymen with an unbiased eye.)
The fi rst bit of fun arrives in the form
of George Jum, a fellow expat with
whom Chungpa has corresponded.
Originally a diplomat, George now
works as a cook and leads a happy
bachelor life on West 72nd Street,
where he invites his countryman to
stay. His debonair style and instant
friendliness win over Chungpa (and
the reader—you can’t help but smile
when his name pops up). Like P.G.
Wodehouse’s Bingo Little, he’s in love
with being in love, rhapsodizing on the
nature of American romance. While
George irons pants to prepare for his
day, Chungpa asks whether he’d ever
get hitched. “I am thinking of love, not
of marriage,” George begins, then ex-
pounds uninterrupted for a page, glee-
fully mixing truisms (“Anything that
law commands in the form of thou shalt
not, that thing man wants more”) with
boneheaded logic: “But then civiliza-
tion is a good thing. We enjoy motor
cars and bathtubs. And who would not
enjoy having more than one wife?”George Jum functions as the happy
opposite of the older, highly cultured
To Wan Kim, some sixteen years re-
moved from his homeland, who can nei-
ther fi nd peace in the West nor consider
himself a Korean: “I have been away
so long I do not feel one any longer,”
he confesses. Chungpa glimpses the
refi ned and rootless gentleman during
his fi rst stay in New York, though they
don’t introduce themselves until a few
years later, recognizing each other at
a Chinatown restaurant.^4 The doomed
To Wan falls in love with Helen Han-
cock, a Boston blue-blood whose older
cousin fancies himself a connoisseur
of all things Asian, yet whose family
sternly forbids their romance. George
Jum and To Wan Kim loop through
Chungpa’s life at irregular intervals,
suggesting possible paths for the edu-
cated Korean immigrant—or the ne-
cessity of creating your own.
To Wan has a tragic trajectory, but
George shines as the fi rst of dozens
of amusing secondary portraits. Oth-
ers include his fellow Korean Doctor
Ok, who has racked up four degrees
and counting (perhaps a jab at Syng-
man Rhee, future fi rst president of
South Korea, who rather incredibly
obtained, between 1907 and 1910, a BA
from George Washington, an MA from
Harvard, and a Ph.D. from Princeton);
the irrepressible D. J. Lively, who runs
a pyramid scheme selling a self-help(^4) Explaining and complaining about
Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, his
new home, he says, “but village... cozy
name, ne?”—surely the fi rst rendering
of that Korean word—yes—in Ameri-
can fi ction.
cambridge.org
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intellectual rigor and
impeccable historical research
with sensitivity and even
imagination to illuminate
this fascinatingly varied
cohort of gender rebels.”
Emma Donoghue, author
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antidote to much of the
conventional wisdom about
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huge service...A must-read
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Black is a brilliantly lucid
guide to the deep history of
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came to be potent ciphers
for civic belonging.”
Patricia J. Williams,
The Nation
“...a remarkable and fitting
tribute to mark the 100th
anniversary of women’s
suffrage in the United States.”
Susan Carroll,
Rutgers University