95highlight premodern Korean culture. The second
half, set in Seoul and Japan, contrasts sharply with
the first half in that it depicts the protagonist’s
anguish and dilemma during his country’s dark
period under the Japanese colonial regime. After
being imprisoned briefly by the Japanese for his
peripheral participation in the 1919 Samil Inde-
pendence March (a series of massive peaceful
demonstrations protesting Japan’s colonization of
Korea), the protagonist renews his yearning to flee
his country and come to America. Through the
voice of Han, Kang concludes that the old “spiri-
tual planet that had been [his] father’s home” with
its “curved lines, its brilliant colors, its haunting
music, its own magic of being” was becoming a
wasteland unable to sustain its young population.
“In loathing of death,” he is pulled as if by “natural
gravity” toward the younger, more vigorous cul-
ture of the West.
Since he regards himself as a spokesperson of
Korean culture and of Asian culture as well, Kang
investigates in The Grass Roof differences between
the East and the West. In depicting the tradition of
arranged marriages, for example, the narrator says
it is not as “barbaric” as it might seem to a West-
ern reader. Concerning the difference between the
styles of partying, he notes that “a young Western
man takes to a party the kind of girl who can give
him a good time, and a young Eastern man finds a
trained girl when he arrives.”
Despite his early attraction to Western culture,
Kang is critically conscious of its disadvantages.
His encounter with Western science drives him
considerably away from his Confucian education,
which seems to him “more and more useless.”
Once in the West, however, Kang becomes aware
of “the moral ambiguity in which its people live,
or its industrial, mechanistic trend which makes
cogs of their lives.” During his education in Japan,
he feels trapped in a moral dilemma: “Should I try
to help my nation with shrewdness and modern
inventions like Japan, and thus be responsible for
the suffering of millions?... Should I spend my
life to be a missionary for the new poison gas?”
Kang is also critical of the missionaries in Korea.
Despite their claim to have been called to service
by “the Lord,” Kang suspects that they have been
truly “kicked out” of the West for “being unfit.”
Kang also accuses them of being unable to get a
job in the West and thus drifting to the East to live
cheaply and enjoy having household servants and
feeling superior to the natives.
Set in the early 20th century, when Japan
steadily and powerfully strove to colonize Korea,
Kang’s narrative also illustrates the atrocities com-
mitted by Japan. Portraying Japan as the “most
unreasonable and excitable” of all nations, Kang
vividly describes how his grandmother died after
being roughly treated by the Japanese police and
how many Koreans committed suicide to protest
Japan’s annexation and brutish policies.
The Grass Roof had firmly established Kang as
the representative immigrant writer of his time.
Valued mostly for the information it provided on
Asian culture, the book nonetheless has since been
praised for strong character development, descrip-
tive language, and humor.Bibliography
Kang, Younghill. The Grass Roof. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1931. Chicago: Follett, 1966.
Oh, Seiwoong. “Younghill Kang.” In Asian American
Autobiographies: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical
Sourcebook, edited by Guiyou Huang. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood, 2001.
SuMee LeeGunga Din Highway Frank Chin (1994)
According to FRANK CHIN, “We are born to fight
to maintain our personal integrity. All art is mar-
tial art. Writing is fighting” (“Come” 35). He
therefore continues his war against the deaden-
ing stereotypes of ethnic Americans in his second
novel, Gunga Din Highway. The title of the novel
is adapted from Rudyard Kipling’s poem about a
native Indian bhisti (water carrier) who desires to
be a soldier and helps British troops against his
own people. Chin employs the title to criticize
contemporary Asian-American writers for eagerly
seeking access and acceptance into mainstream
society even at the expense of “selling out” their
own people.Gunga Din Highway 95