NPR / May 28, 2019

Korean-American novelist Younghill Kang didn't need to self-publish: He was taken on by Maxwell Perkins, the legendary Scribner's editor who counted Fitzgerald and Hemingway among his authors. Kang's 1937 novel, East Goes West, is a coming-to-America odyssey that charts the wanderings of its hero, Chungpa Han, as he flees Japanese-occupied Korea for America.

Buzzfeed / May 20, 2019

The novel East Goes West was the first to detail in fiction the experiences of a Korean American in America, by the first Korean American novelist, Younghill Kang. First published in 1937, East Goes West would later inspire the Filipino American Carlos Bulosan’s novel America Is in the Heart, published 28 years later — Bulosan quite openly said that Kang’s success emboldened him to write. Bulosan’s novel was also groundbreaking and inspirational, and so there is a seismic line to draw in Asian American fiction that begins with Kang and extends, in a series of autobiographical novels by Asian American writers, into the present. A line I’ll draw all the way to myself.

Christian Science Monitor / June 06, 2019

“The Joy Luck Club” – by all accounts a modern American classic – celebrates its 30th print anniversary this year with a new preface added by Ms. Tan. Making publishing history, Joy Luck’s publishing parent, Penguin Group, simultaneously expands its Penguin Classics with the inclusion of four essential Asian American titles: East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee (1937) by Korean American Younghill Kang, an immigrant epic that criss-crosses a less-than-welcoming American landscape;

Town & Country / April 09, 2022

Apple TV 's Pachinko is completely captivating. The story traces three generations of a Korean family, beginning in the 1910s in a small fishing village through the 1980s in Osaka, Japan. Featuring an all-star cast—including Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung, South Korean superstar Lee Min-ho, Broadway veteran Jin Ha, and newcomer Minha Lee—the eight episode series is surely poised to become an awards juggernaut.