Younghill Kang

Younghill Kang (1903 – 11 December 1972) was a Korean-American writer and scholar who was the first Korean to publish novels in English in the United States — and whose two autobiographical novels, The Grass Roof (1931) and East Goes West (1937), are foundational works of Korean-American and Asian-American literature. Written in the years when Korea was under Japanese colonial occupation and Korean immigrants in America were few and marginalised, Kang’s books chronicle the experience of migration with a directness, literary ambition, and self-aware humour that were decades ahead of their time. He has been called the first Korean-American novelist, and his rediscovery in the late twentieth century has made him a central figure in the history of Asian-American writing.

Life

Kang was born in Hongsung, in what is now South Korea, during the final years of the Korean Empire. He grew up in a traditional Confucian household and was educated in the Chinese classics. When Japan formally annexed Korea in 1910, Kang was seven years old; the occupation — which lasted until 1945 — shaped his entire youth and his determination to leave.

He emigrated to the United States in 1921, arriving with almost no English and very little money. He worked at various jobs in New York — including stints as a bookseller and a museum employee — while teaching himself English with extraordinary intensity. He attended Harvard as a special student and eventually joined the faculty of New York University as a lecturer in East Asian literature. He also worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he advised on Korean and East Asian collections.

His friendship with Thomas Wolfe — the two met in New York literary circles — resulted in Wolfe’s helping Kang find a publisher for The Grass Roof. The literary world of 1930s New York was hospitable to Kang in ways that the larger American society was not: he was praised by critics but faced routine racial discrimination in housing, employment, and daily life.

The Grass Roof (1931)

Kang’s first novel is an autobiographical account of his childhood and youth in Korea — the Confucian household, the Japanese occupation, the traditions of Korean scholarship, the landscape and culture of a country being erased by colonial power. The book is written in lyrical, carefully crafted English and was praised by reviewers for its vivid evocation of a world almost entirely unknown to American readers. The New York Times called it “a remarkable achievement.”

The title refers to the thatched-roof houses of Korean villages — a symbol of the traditional world that Japanese modernisation was destroying. The book ends with Kang’s departure for America, a moment of both liberation and loss.

East Goes West (1937)

East Goes West is Kang’s masterpiece — a picaresque, satirical, deeply moving novel about the experience of being Korean in 1920s and 1930s America. The protagonist, Chungpa Han, arrives in New York, encounters racism, poverty, sexual confusion, intellectual ambition, and the bewildering contradictions of American democracy. The novel is both a comedy of manners and a serious exploration of what it costs to reinvent oneself in a new culture.

The book’s tone is remarkable: Kang writes with a wry, self-deprecating humour that acknowledges the absurdity of his situation without diminishing its pain. He describes being refused service in restaurants, being lectured about “Orientals” by well-meaning liberals, and being treated as an exotic curiosity by people who have never met a Korean — all with a lightness that makes the underlying anger more, not less, effective.

East Goes West was less commercially successful than The Grass Roof and went out of print for decades. Its rediscovery in the 1990s — championed by scholars of Asian-American literature including Sunyoung Lee and others — established it as one of the essential early Asian-American novels, alongside Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart (1946) and Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950).

Later Life

Kang continued to write and lecture but never published another novel. He worked on a third book, which remained unfinished. He lectured widely on Korean culture and literature and was a tireless advocate for Korean independence during the Japanese occupation. After the Korean War, he returned to Korea briefly but found it difficult to reconcile the country he remembered with the one that existed.

He died in Satellite Beach, Florida, in 1972, largely forgotten by the American literary establishment. His rehabilitation as a major figure in Asian-American literary history is a twenty-first-century development.

Critical Standing

Kang is now recognised as a pioneering figure — the first Korean-American novelist and one of the first Asian-American writers to publish serious literary fiction in English. East Goes West in particular has been embraced by scholars and readers as a work of genuine literary distinction and historical importance.

Collecting Kang

The Grass Roof (1931, Scribner’s) in first edition with dust jacket is a significant rarity — fine copies bring $500–$1,500. East Goes West (1937, Scribner’s) is even scarcer in first edition and brings $300–$800. Both books were published in small print runs and were not widely preserved. Modern reprint editions (Folios and Kaya Press) are readily available and inexpensive. Kang’s signature is very scarce.