East Goes West

By: Younghill Kang, Sunyoung Lee, Alexander Chee - introduction

Narrated by: Song Yee

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

“A wonderfully resplendent evocation of a newcomer’s America” (Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker) by the father of Korean American literature

A Penguin Classic

Having fled Japanese-occupied Korea for the gleaming promise of the United States with nothing but four dollars and a suitcase full of Shakespeare to his name, the young, idealistic Chungpa Han arrives in a New York teeming with expatriates, businessmen, students, scholars, and indigents. Struggling to support his studies, he travels throughout the United States and Canada, becoming by turns a traveling salesman, a domestic worker, and a farmer, and observing along the way the idealism, greed, and shifting values of the industrializing twentieth century. Part picaresque adventure, part shrewd social commentary, East Goes West casts a sharply satirical eye on the demands and perils of assimilation. It is a masterpiece not only of Asian American literature but also of American literature.

Celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month with these three Penguin Classics:

America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan (9780143134039)
East Goes West by Younghill Kang (9780143134305)
The Hanging on Union Square by H. T. Tsiang (9780143134022)