--a houseboy--which galls Haesu:
I'll never understand how you do it, how you can remain mute while someone orders you to come here, go there, do this, do that. . . like you were some trained animal. They call you a houseboy. A twenty-five-year old man being called "boy" (10).
The real racial tension in the Korean culture, though, is between the Koreans and the Japanese on their home ground, for that is a conflict that had been long-standing and bloody long before Koreans started coming to the west. This is the where the theme of Korean nationalism is strong. Haesu was about to leave for San Francisco in 1919 when Korea declared independence from Japan, and though she was about to stay behind, she was dissuaded by
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