• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.215-240
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• 2009

This paper focuses on how Younghill Kang internalizes whiteness ideology through interracial romance to build himself as an oriental Yankee and recover his masculinity in his autobiographical novel East Goes West. This paper also focuses on Kang's strategy of racial and cultural hybridity presented in this novel. The theoretical basis of my argument is a mixture of Fanon's psychoanalysis in his Black Skin, White Masks, Bhabha's notion of mimicry in The Location of Culture, and notions related to race and gender of some Asian critics such as Patricia Chu, Jinqi Ling, and Lisa Lowe. In East Goes West, white women appear as "ladder of success" of successful assimilation and serve as cultural mediators and instructors and sometimes adversaries who Korean male immigrants have to win to establish identities in which Americanness, ethnicity, and masculinity are integrated. However, three Korean men, Chungpa Han, To Wan Kim, George Jum, who fall in love with white women fail to win their beloveds in marriage. George Jum fails to sustain a white dancer, Jun' interest. Kim wins the affection of Helen Hancock, a New England lady, but Kim commits suicide when he knows Helen killed herself because her family doesn't approve their relationship. Han's love for Trip remains vague, but Kang implies Han will continue his quest for "the spiritual home" as the name of "Trip." In East Goes West, Kang also attempts to challenge the imagining of a pure, monolithic, and naturalized white dominant U.S. Culture by exploring the cultural and racial hybridity shown by June and the various scenes of Halem in the 1920s. June who works for a Harlem cabaret is a white woman but she wears dark makeup. Kang questions the white face of America's self-understanding and racial constitution of a unified white American culture through June's racial masquerade. Kang shows that like Asian and black Americans, the white American also has an ambivalent racial identity through June's black mimicry and there is no natural and unchanging essence behind one's gender and race identity constitution.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.35
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• pp.97-122
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• 2014

Since the arrival of Chinese immigrants in the 1850s, many Euro-American writers tended to project their fears, contempt, desires and fantasy onto the Other race and perceived Chinese Americans in stereotypes-dangerous villains, unassimilated aliens, quiet and passive servants, sexually submissive women, or seductive prostitutes. However in the 1970s and the 1980s Euro-American novels expressed varying attitudes towards Chinese Americans. Many earlier EuroAmerican writers began portraying positive characterizations of Chinese Americans. The purpose of this study is to examine the ways one of the Euro-American writers, Howard Fast characterized Chinese Americans in The Immigrants. Part of the novel concerns a Chinese American family. Fast gave a favorable portrayal of Chinese Americans. Unlike many Euro-American novelists who dealt only with Chinese American villains and prostitutes and view Chinese Americans as the lowest class of American society, Fast, on the other hand, portrayed Chinese Americans as law-abiding and useful citizens. Thus, I will discuss how Howard Fast subverted the familiar negative characterization of Chinese Americans and placed Chinese American experiences in the context of American immigration history. Many white Americans tended to notice only the lurid and sensational aspects in the Chinese American community. They seldom regarded Chinese Americans as people with homes and families and seldom saw Chinese Americans as individuals, as human beings with feelings, pain, and joy. To counter this racist view, Fast described the family life of Chinese Americans and depicted Chinese Americans as individuals with a full range of human emotions and with strong family and cultural ties. Though Fast debunked some myths about Chinese Americans, he also reinforces other stereotypes or some stereotypical illusions about them. In conclusion, I'll demonstrate Fast's work remains an incomplete representation of Chinese Americans.