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East Goes West
- Narrated by: Song Yee
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
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Publisher's Summary
"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 20th 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.
Critic Reviews
“A Nabokovian stylistic tour de force.” (Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel)
“The story of Chungpa Han is truly, like the old New York he encounters, as ‘million-hued as a dream’. A wonderfully resplendent evocation of a newcomer’s America, Younghill Kang’s classic novel is as vibrant and pointed in its vision today as it was 60 years ago, and may prove to be one of our most vital documents. East Goes West deserves rediscovery.” (Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker)
“Thrillingly timeless... The finest, funniest, craziest, sanest, most cheerfully depressing Korean-American novel... A vast, unruly masterpiece that is our earliest portrait of the artist as a young Korean-American... East Goes West’s tumbling prose and loose, picaresque structure feel amazingly ‘free and vigorous’ (per [Thomas] Wolfe) today.... The novelist and memoirist Alexander Chee’s rousing introduction to the new Penguin Classics edition... argues strongly for its relevance today.... Its value is in the heady mix of high and low, the antic yet clear-eyed take on race relations, the parade of tragic and comic bit players, and above all, the unleashed chattering of Chungpa’s distinctive voice... The Penguin edition ...reminds us of how excellent [Kang] really was.... This brash modernist comic novel still feels electric.” (Ed Park, The New York Review of Books)
“Kang is a born writer, everywhere he is free and vigorous: he has an original and poetic mind, and he loves life.” (Thomas Wolfe)
What listeners say about East Goes West
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Young chicken
- 11-23-21
A fantastic read. I
A wonderful journey with excellent commentary on the meaning of the book at the end.
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The Free World
- Art and Thought in the Cold War
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 34 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 174
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 134
The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense - economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Cuts off mid-sentence and never ends!
- By Sasha Senderovich on 05-01-21
By: Louis Menand
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Free as a Jew
- A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation
- By: Ruth R. Wisse
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 14 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story5 out of 5 stars 22
First came parents with the good sense to flee Europe in 1940 and the good fortune to reach the land of freedom. Their daughter, Ruth, grew up in the shadow of genocide - but in tandem with the birth of Israel, which remained her lodestar. She learned that although Jewishness is biologically transmitted, democracy is not, and both require intensive, intelligent transmission through education in each and every generation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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great book
- By Dan M. Cooper on 12-26-21
By: Ruth R. Wisse
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Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.
By: Francesca Wade
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The Guarded Gate
- Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants out of America
- By: Daniel Okrent
- Narrated by: Daniel Okrent
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 138
A forgotten, dark chapter of American history with implications for the current day, The Guarded Gate tells the story of the scientists who argued that certain nationalities were inherently inferior, providing the intellectual justification for the harshest immigration law in American history. Brandished by the upper-class Bostonians and New Yorkers - many of them progressives - who led the anti-immigration movement, the eugenic arguments helped keep hundreds of thousands of Jews, Italians, and other unwanted groups out of the US for more than 40 years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Is history actually ‘repeating itself with Trump/Stephen Miller Policies?
- By Sean O'Shea on 07-21-19
By: Daniel Okrent
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Gods of the Upper Air
- How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
- By: Charles King
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 288
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 249
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 247
A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled "primitive" or "advanced". What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Much Needed despite poor performance
- By J. Kahn on 08-21-19
By: Charles King
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The Reason for the Darkness of the Night
- Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science
- By: John Tresch
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story5 out of 5 stars 21
John Tresch offers a bold new biography of a writer whose short, tortured life continues to fascinate. Shining a spotlight on an era when the lines separating entertainment, speculation, and scientific inquiry were blurred, Tresch reveals Poe's obsession with science and lifelong ambition to advance and question human knowledge. He remained an avid and often combative commentator on new discoveries, publishing and hustling in literary scenes that also hosted the era's most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Know the Real Poe
- By Elliott Wolfe, M.D. on 06-28-21
By: John Tresch
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Genius & Anxiety
- How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Post-anxiety
- By Amaze on 03-27-20
By: Norman Lebrecht
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Occult America
- The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation
- By: Mitch Horowitz
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,065
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 892
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 893
Mitch Horowitz presents a meticulously researched, compulsively listenable history of the mystical and spiritual experience in our country. Focusing on the impact that the 19-century movements of Freemasonry, Spiritualism, and transcendentalism have had on America, Horowitz portrays a colorful cast of characters as he explains the origins of the Ouija board, the political influence of Spiritualism on the Senate, and the source of the mysterious slogan on the back of the dollar bill.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Exploring America's spiritualist roots
- By Ray on 12-08-09
By: Mitch Horowitz
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The New Negro
- The Life of Alain Locke
- By: Jeffrey C. Stewart
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 45 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Let me guess? Locke was a gay black man?
- By Porter on 01-21-20
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Journey to the Edge of Reason
- The Life of Kurt Gödel
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 93
Nearly a hundred years after its publication, Kurt Gödel's famous proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true - yet never provable - continues to unsettle mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gödel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting story of a great mathematician
- By James Orlin on 04-28-22
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Walt Whitman’s America
- A Cultural Biography
- By: David S. Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 28 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
In his poetry, Walt Whitman set out to encompass all of America, and in so doing, heal its deepening divisions. This magisterial biography demonstrates the epic scale of his achievement, as well as the dreams and anxieties that impelled it, for it places the poet securely within the political and cultural context of his age.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Helps the listener to understand Leaves of Grass
- By Phil F. on 10-13-22
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Author in Chief
- The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote
- By: Craig Fehrman
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
In Craig Fehrman’s groundbreaking work of history, Author in Chief, the story of America’s presidents and their books opens a rich new window into presidential biography. From volumes lost to history - Calvin Coolidge’s Autobiography, which was one of the most widely discussed titles of 1929 - to ones we know and love - Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, which was very nearly never published - Fehrman unearths countless insights about the presidents through their literary works.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 03-12-20
By: Craig Fehrman
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Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
- By: Andrew S. Curran
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story5 out of 5 stars 33
Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.
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5 out of 5 stars
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lifelong coverage of his life.
- By Michael Daly on 03-22-21
By: Andrew S. Curran
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J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Making of a Legend
- By: Colin Duriez
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
J.R.R. Tolkien's creations, imagination, and characters captured the attention of millions of readers. But who was the man who dreamt up the intricate languages and perfectly crafted world of Middle-earth? Tolkien had a difficult life, for many years: orphaned and poor, his guardian forbade him to communicate with the woman he had fallen in love with, and he went through the horrors of the First World War. An intensely private and brilliant scholar, he spent over 50 years working on the languages, history, peoples, and geography of Middle-earth,
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very insightful
- By Luke B. on 10-27-20
By: Colin Duriez
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The History of White People
- By: Nell Irvin Painter
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 860
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 745
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 743
A mind-expanding and myth-destroying exploration of notions of white race—not merely a skin color but also a signal of power, prestige, and beauty to be withheld and granted selectively. Ever since the Enlightenment, race theory and its inevitable partner, racism, have followed a crooked road, constructed by dominant peoples to justify their domination of others. Filling a huge gap in historical literature that long focused on the non-white, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, tracing not only the invention of the idea of race but also the frequent worship of “whiteness” for economic, social, scientific, and political ends.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Destroys the myth that race is about skin color
- By Emily L. on 08-25-14
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Where the Jews Aren't
- The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
In 1929, the Soviet government set aside a sparsely populated area in the Soviet Far East for settlement by Jews. The place was called Birobidzhan. The idea of an autonomous Jewish region was championed by Jewish Communists, Yiddishists, and intellectuals, who envisioned a haven of post-oppression Jewish culture. By the mid-1930s tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, as well as about a thousand Jews from abroad, had moved there.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Jewish World of Our Ancestors
- By Roberta L. Ruben on 06-16-18
By: Masha Gessen
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The Last American Aristocrat
- The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams
- By: David S. Brown
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. The last member of his distinguished family - after great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams - to gain national attention, he is remembered today as a historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist. Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual.
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5 out of 5 stars
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outstanding book, highly recommend it
- By D. Littman on 02-19-21
By: David S. Brown