Ronyoung Kim
Encyclopedia
Ronyoung Kim aka Kim Ronyoung, was the pen name of Gloria Hahn, a Korean American
writer. She was born and raised to Korean immigrants in Los Angeles
's Koreatown
and died not long after finishing Clay Walls (1987), a Pulitzer Prize
-nominated novel about a Korean family that leaves Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1920s to live in the United States that was "the first major novel to illustrate the experiences of Korean immigrants and Korean Americans in the United States".
and dislikes Chun's patriarchal attitudes; but Chun feels that Haesu cannot adapt to their new situation and that she doesn't appreciate his work supporting the family. While Haesu and their children visit Korea, Chun loses the family business; he becomes addicted to gambling, abandons the family and eventually is found dead in Nevada. Haesu takes a job to support her family and eventually sells off a piece of land in Korea she was using to connect her to Korea. Faye grows up knowing only the States; her brothers and male friends join the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor
, and at the end of the novel, she is being courted by a Korean medical student from Yale
.
Kim began the novel after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1976 and based it partly on the experiences of her parents: her father came from a peasant background and her mother was an aristocrat who participated in the Korean-independence movement in the States. The novel focuses both on key aspects of Korean-American life during World War II (including living conditions, Korean nationalism and the government's mistaken treatment of Koreans as "Japanese citizens" after Pearl Harbor) and on the asymmetry of race, gender and class relationships in both Korean and U.S. cultures.
database and/or at JSTOR
:
Korean American
Korean Americans are Americans of Korean descent, mostly from South Korea, with a small minority from North Korea...
writer. She was born and raised to Korean immigrants in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
's Koreatown
Koreatown
Koreatown is a term to describe a Korean ethnic enclave within a city or metropolitan area. Similar terms may include Little Seoul or Little Korea.-Beijing:There are more than 150,000 Koreans living in Beijing...
and died not long after finishing Clay Walls (1987), a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-nominated novel about a Korean family that leaves Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1920s to live in the United States that was "the first major novel to illustrate the experiences of Korean immigrants and Korean Americans in the United States".
Clay Walls
This novel about an immigrant family and their life in California from the 1910s to the 1940s. It is divided into three parts: The first focuses on the mother, the aristocratic Haesu; the second, on the father, Chun, who is from a farming background; and the third on their American-born daughter, Faye. Chun and Haesu had fled to the USA after Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, but find their relationship difficult in the States, due partly to American racial discrimination but due also to the class differences between them. Haesu grows more involved with the immigrant community's work for the Korean independence movementKorean independence movement
The Korean independence movement grew out of the Japanese colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. After the Japanese surrendered, Korea became independent; that day is now an annual holiday called Gwangbokjeol in South Korea, and Chogukhaebangŭi nal in North Korea.-Background:In...
and dislikes Chun's patriarchal attitudes; but Chun feels that Haesu cannot adapt to their new situation and that she doesn't appreciate his work supporting the family. While Haesu and their children visit Korea, Chun loses the family business; he becomes addicted to gambling, abandons the family and eventually is found dead in Nevada. Haesu takes a job to support her family and eventually sells off a piece of land in Korea she was using to connect her to Korea. Faye grows up knowing only the States; her brothers and male friends join the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
, and at the end of the novel, she is being courted by a Korean medical student from Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
.
Kim began the novel after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1976 and based it partly on the experiences of her parents: her father came from a peasant background and her mother was an aristocrat who participated in the Korean-independence movement in the States. The novel focuses both on key aspects of Korean-American life during World War II (including living conditions, Korean nationalism and the government's mistaken treatment of Koreans as "Japanese citizens" after Pearl Harbor) and on the asymmetry of race, gender and class relationships in both Korean and U.S. cultures.
See also
- List of Korean American writersKorean American writersKorean American literature treats a wide range of topics including Korean life in America, the interesction of American and Korean culture in the lives of young Korean Americans, as well as life and history on the Korean peninsula.-Korean American writers:...
- List of Asian American writers
Scholarly studies
These articles about Kim are listed in the MLAModern Language Association
The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature...
database and/or at JSTOR
JSTOR
JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
:
- Jeong, Young Sook; Daughtering Asian American Women's Literature in Maxine Hong KingstonMaxine Hong KingstonMaxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United...
, Nellie WongNellie WongNellie Wong is a poet and activist for feminist and socialist causes.-Biography:Wong was born in Oakland, California to Chinese immigrants. Her father had immigrated to Oakland in 1912....
, and Ronyoung Kim Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 2007 Feb; 67 (8): 2985. Indiana U, Pennsylvania, 2006. - Lee, A. Robert. "Eat a Bowl of TeaEat a Bowl of Tea (novel)Eat a Bowl of Tea is a 1961 novel by Louis Chu. It was the first Chinese American novel set in Chinese America. Because of its portrayal of the "bachelor society" in New York's Chinatown after World War II, it has become an important work in Asian American studies. It has been cited as an influence...
: Asian America in the Novels of Gish JenGish JenGish Jen is a contemporary American writer.-Background:...
, Cynthia KadohataCynthia KadohataCynthia Kadohata is a Japanese American writer known for winning the 2005 Newbery Medal. Her first published short story appeared in The New Yorker in 1986....
, Kim Ronyoung, Jessica HagedornJessica HagedornJessica Tarahata Hagedorn is a Filipino-American playwright, writer, poet, storyteller, musician, and multimedia performance artist.-Biography:...
, and Tran Van DinhTran Van DinhTran Van Dinh is an American – Vietnamese diplomat, author, professor.-Early life:Dr. Tran Van Dinh, professor emeritus at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was born and raised in Hue, the former imperial capital of Vietnam.He came from a family of Confucian scholars, Buddhist...
" The Yearbook of English Studies Vol. 24, Ethnicity and Representation in American Literature (1994), pp. 263–280 online - Libretti, Tim; "Asian American Cultural Resistance" Race, Gender and Class, 1997; 4 (3): 20-39.
- Na, Younsook; "Positioning Haesu in Multiple Locations: The Issue of Gender, Class and Nationalism in Clay Walls" Feminist Studies in English Literature, 2002 Winter; 10 (2): 309-29.
- Oh, Sae-a; ""Precious Possessions Hidden": A Cultural Background to Ronyoung Kim's Clay Walls" MELUS Vol. 26, No. 3, Confronting Exiles. (Autumn, 2001), pp. 31-49. online
- Phillips, Jane; "'We'd Be Rich in Korea': Value and Contingency in Clay Walls by Ronyoung Kim" MELUS, 1998 Summer; 23 (2): 173-87. online
- Shin, Duckhee; "Class and Self-Identity in Clay Walls" MELUS, 1999 Winter; 24 (4): 125-36. online
- Solberg, S. E.; "Clay Walls: Korean American Pioneers" Korean Culture, 1986 Dec; 7 (4): 30-35.
- Thoma, Pamela. "Representing Korean American Female Subjects, Negotiating Multiple Americas, and Reading Beyond the Ending in Ronyoung Kim's Clay Walls" pp. 265–93 IN: Lawrence, Keith (ed.); Cheung, Floyd (ed.); Recovered Legacies: Authority and Identity in Early Asian American Literature. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP; 2005.
- Yun, Chung-Hei. "Clay Walls by Ronyoung Kim" pp. 78–85 IN: Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia (ed. and introd.); Sumida, Stephen H. (ed. and introd.); A Resource Guide to Asian American Literature. New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America; 2001.