＂Work Makes the Man: The Melanization of an 'Oriental Yankee' in Younghill Kang's East Goes West＂

Abstract

Hyeyurn ChungThis essay explores labor, physicality, and masculinity through an analysis of Kang's East Goes West: the Making of an Oriental Yankee (1937). There is a tacit agreement in society that presumes being a breadwinner is a core part of being a man; thus definitions of masculinity are “deeply enmeshed in the history of institutions" - e.g. labor markets - “and of economic structures" (Connell 28 - 9). Per this premise, this essay contends that an examination of racialized masculinities in the workplace is a logical point of departure in a re-consideration of American masculinity in that black migration and Asian immigration prompted and exacerbated the crisis of traditional masculinity. Mostly taking place in New York in the early twentieth century, East Goes West delineates how labor becomes a site of dissension among the inhabitants of the racial margins. Moreover, Kang relays how Asian American men's early employment record in urban life branded them as epicene; Chungpa is mostly confined to domestic labor, a role typically assigned to black women. Consequently, Chungpa discovers that in order to survive a harsh immigrant reality, he must, in a sense, undergo a racial and gender transformation. In lieu of “disassociating [himself from] the ‘black’ and ‘feminine,’ Chungpa refuses such a practice of dis-identification” (Knadler 13). George Jum emerges as a significant character as he aids Chungpa to embrace his new reality in America by introducing Chungpa to Harlem and its denizens. Although George has been overlooked as a minor character, I re-evaluate his significance in his capacity to disarticulate the hegemonic discourse by his prioritization of blackness in reclaiming his masculinity; by stylizing his body with black masculinity, George defines a new type of subjectivity that not only replicates but revises the American narrative of manhood.