Clay Walls

A landmark modern classic about the Korean American immigrant experience and the dawn of Los Angeles’s Koreatown

A Penguin Classic

Kim Ronyoung (Gloria Hahn, 1926–1987) tells the story of Haesu and Chun, immigrants who fled Japanese-occupied Korea for Los Angeles in the decade prior to World War II, and their American-born children. First published in 1986, Clay Walls offers a portrait of what being Korean in California meant in the first half of the twentieth century and how these immigrants’ nationalist spirit helped them withstand racism and poverty. Kim explores the tensions within a family of immigrants and new Americans and brings to the forefront the themes of Korean immigration, U.S. racism, generational trauma, and the early decades of Los Angeles’s Koreatown from a Korean American woman’s point of view. Through three sections representing the perspectives of mother, father, and daughter, what resonates the most is the voice of a woman and her self-determination, through national identity, marriage, and motherhood.

Kim Ronyoung was the pen name of Gloria Hahn (1926–1987), a Korean American writer who was born and raised in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. After her children graduated from college, Kim earned a bachelor of arts in Far Eastern art and culture at San Francisco State University. She was a docent at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Throughout her life, Kim wrote many poems, short stories, and essays. Her first and only novel, Clay Walls, was the first major novel focusing on the experiences of Korean immigrants and Korean Americans in the United States. It was published in 1987, shortly before her death. Kim passed away on February 3, 1987, at the age of sixty, after a lengthy battle with breast cancer. David Cho (introduction) is director of multicultural development at Wheaton College and specializes in late-nineteenth- to twentieth-century American literature, American ethnic literature, and Asian Pacific American literature.