Walls

+ 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 an

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onnection from Korea, and at each point she is forced to make a decision---of action or of consciousness---which results in a kind of victory and a new strength. Sometimes the victory is simply a willingness to face the hard, cold facts of reality: Only a few minutes separated the mansions of well-to-do Americans from the plain wood-framed houses of the ghettos. But it might as well be a hundred years, she thought. Her country's history went back thousands of years but no one in America seemed to care. To her dismay, few Americans knew where Korea was (7). Sometimes, the mere thought of what she is wearing brings Haesu to a state of despair She too should be in silk, airy gauze flowing freely in the might air because Korean shirts are full and unconstrained Haesu suddenly felt the weight of her burgundy velvet dress as it hung plainly over her. Her arms seemed bound by the long sleeves buttoned tightly at the wrist. The dress resembled one Greta Garbo had worn in a movie (86). She sees the foolishness of her desire to look like an American movie star. Again, however, the stripping away of illusions leaves Haesu a stronger person, more able and willing to do what she needs to do to not only survive but to maintain her sen

Category: Literature - W