Necessary Roughness

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism.

A major theme in Necessary Roughness is the tension created when different cultures confront each other—in this case, when the Korean Kim family moves first to Los Angeles, then to Iron River, Minnesota. In Los Angeles, the family has a large and close-knit Korean community around them, but in Iron River, they are among the few people of color in a predominantly white community. Chan observes that he “never realized how bad [his father’s] English is” until they arrived in Minnesota (23), because in Los Angeles’s Koreatown, he was able to conduct most of his daily conversations in Korean. Now, forced to speak in English, Abogee’s responsible, dominant, tough negotiator persona falls away; in some ways, he is rendered helpless in this new place, creating internal and external struggles. Abogee struggles to face the new culture in front of him and tries to raise his children with traditional Korean values—one night Chan hears his father say, “If we were in Korea, [Chan] would never talk back to [me] like [he does]” (3). Chan resents his father’s position both because he is trying his best and because he knows what other American kids are allowed to get away with.