Ronyoung Kim (March 28, 1926 – February 1987), aka Kim Ronyoung, was the pen name of Gloria Hahn, a

Korean American Korean Americans are Americans of Korean ancestry (mostly from South Korea). In 2015, the Korean-American community constituted about 0.56% of the United States population, or about 1.82 million people, and was the fifth-largest Asian Americans ...

writer. She was born and raised to Korean immigrantsRonyoung, Kim
/ref> in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Koreatown A Koreatown (Korean: 코리아타운), also known as a Little Korea or Little Seoul, is a Korean-dominated ethnic enclave within a city or metropolitan area outside the Korean Peninsula. History Koreatowns as an East Asian ethnic enclave have ...

"Ronyoung Kim", ''Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature'', ed. Seiwoong Oh, 2007, p.149; accessed through Google Books 11 March 2011. and died not long after finishing ''Clay Walls'' (1987), a

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

-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 United States 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 movement The Korean independence movement was a military and diplomatic campaign to achieve the independence of Korea from Japan. After the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, Korea's domestic resistance peaked in the March 1st Movement of 1919, which ...

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 The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...

, and at the end of the novel, she is being courted by a Korean medical student from

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

. 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.

References

" ''The Yearbook of English Studies'' Vol. 24, Ethnicity and Representation in American Literature (1994), pp. 263–28
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.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kim, Ronyoung American writers of Korean descent 1926 births 1987 deaths 20th-century American novelists American novelists of Asian descent Novelists from Los Angeles American women novelists 20th-century American women writers

''Clay Walls''

See also

References

Further reading

External links