+ Kim Ronyoung's Clay Walls is a novel which tells the story of Korean immigrants to the United States in the years before the outbreak of World War II. The book shows how these immigrants and their children not only survived, but managed to maintain their dignity and their connection to their own culture in the face of tremendous obstacles. The novel is clearly meant to be a tribute to these Korean-Americans and to their courage and steadfastness in refusing to be defeated by very difficult circumstances in a very strange land.
The book specifically covers the lives of the Chun family from the 1920s to the end of World War II. The family is composed of Haesu, her husband Chun, and their American-born children. The most important child is their daughter Faye. The story is about the arrival of the couple in Los Angeles in the 1920s and their efforts to make a home in the United States, a culture completely at odds with everything they have known. The birth of daughter Faye brings new hope and new difficulties for the family. Faye and Chun and the other children are important characters, but mainly insofar as they help the reader understand the changes Haesu goes through in the new land.
From the first to the last scene, the major issue is the conflict between the past and the present, the old homeland of security and familiarity and the new land of problems and strange ways. Of course, at the same time, the "old homeland" is no longer what it was, so that the immigrants and their children are faced with a situation calling for adaptation without being destroyed. They cannot go back to Korea, but they cannot live their lives in the United States as they lived in Korea.
The first scene of the book sees Haesu becoming fed up with her job as housecleaner to a rich white American woman, Mrs. Randolph. Haesu refuses to clean the toilet again, and she quits her job, though it is important to her and her family economically. The wom...