『동과 서의 만남』에 나타난 이민자들의 로맨스와 혼종화Immigrants’ Romance and Hybridity in Younghill Kang’s East Goes West
- Authors
- 정은숙
- Issue Date
- 2009
- Publisher
- 한국영어영문학회
- Keywords
- Younghill Kang; East Goes West: The Making of an OrientalYankee; whiteness; Fanon; Bhabha; hybridity; romance; gender; sexuality; 강용흘; 『동과 서의 만남: 한 동양인의 양키 형성과정』; 백인됨; 파농; 바바; 혼종화; 로맨스; 젠더; 성
- Citation
- 영어영문학, v.55, no.2, pp 215 - 240
- Pages
- 26
- Journal Title
- 영어영문학
- Volume
- 55
- Number
- 2
- Start Page
- 215
- End Page
- 240
- URI
- https://scholarworks.bwise.kr/cau/handle/2019.sw.cau/32352
- DOI
- 10.15794/jell.2009.55.2.001
- ISSN
- 1016-2283
2465-8545
- Abstract
- 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.
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