Chang-Rae Lee

In this Korean name, the family name is Lee.
Chang-rae Lee
Chang-rae Lee speaks to a University of Michigan class about his novel On Such a Full Sea.
Chang-rae Lee speaks to a University of Michigan class about his novel On Such a Full Sea.
Born (1965-07-29) July 29, 1965 (age 58)
South Korea
OccupationNovelist
NationalityAmerican (naturalized)
EducationYale University (BA)
University of Oregon (MFA)
Notable worksNative Speaker; Aloft
Notable awardsHemingway Foundation/PEN Award
Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature
Asian American Literary Awards
SpouseMichelle Branca
Korean name
Hangul
이창래
Hanja
Revised RomanizationI Chang-rae
McCune–ReischauerYi Ch'ang-rae

Chang-rae Lee (born July 29, 1965) is a Korean-American novelist and a professor of creative writing at Stanford University.[1] He was previously Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton and director of Princeton's Program in Creative Writing.

Early life[edit]

Lee was born in South Korea in 1965 to Young Yong and Inja Hong Lee. He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was 3 years old [2] to join his father, who was then a psychiatric resident and later established a successful practice in Westchester County, New York.[3] In a 1999 interview with Ferdinand M. De Leon, Lee described his childhood as "a standard suburban American upbringing," in which he attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, before earning a B.A. in English at Yale University in 1987.[3] After working as an equities analyst on Wall Street for a year, he enrolled at the University of Oregon. With the manuscript for Native Speaker as his thesis, he received a master of fine arts degree in writing in 1993 and became an assistant professor of creative writing at the university. On 19 June 1993 Lee married architect Michelle Branca, with whom he has two daughters.[3] The success of his debut novel, Native Speaker, led Lee to move to Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he was hired to direct and teach in the prestigious creative-writing program.[3]

Career[edit]

Lee's first novel, Native Speaker (1995), won numerous awards including the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.[1] Centered on a Korean-American industrial spy, the novel explores themes of alienation and betrayal as experienced by immigrants and first-generation citizens, in their struggle to assimilate in American life.[2] In 1999, he published his second novel, A Gesture Life. This elaborated on his themes of identity and assimilation through the narrative of an elderly Japanese immigrant in the US who was born in Korea but later adopted to a Japanese family and remembers treating Korean comfort women during World War II.[4] For this book, Lee received the Asian-American Literary Award.[5] His 2004 novel Aloft received mixed notices from the critics and featured Lee's first protagonist who is not Asian American, but a disengaged and isolated Italian-American suburbanite forced to deal with his world.[6] It received the 2006 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Adult Fiction category.[7] His 2010 novel The Surrendered won the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was a nominated finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[8] Lee's next novel, On Such a Full Sea (2014) is set in a dystopian future version of the American city of Baltimore, Maryland called B-Mor where the main character, Fan, is a Chinese-American laborer working as a diver in a fish farm.[9] It was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award.[10]

In 2016, Lee joined the faculty of Stanford University, where he is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English.[11] He previously taught creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.[12] He was also a Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yonsei University in South Korea.[12]

Lee has compared his writing process to spelunking. "You kind of create the right path for yourself. But, boy, are there so many points at which you think, absolutely, I'm going down the wrong hole here. And I can't get back to the right hole."[13]

Major themes[edit]

Lee explores issues central to the Asian-American experience: the legacy of the past; the encounter of diverse cultures; the challenges of racism and discrimination, and exclusion; dreams achieved and dreams deferred. In the process of developing and defining itself, then, Asian-American literature speaks to the very heart of what it means to be American. The authors of this literature above all concern themselves with identity, with the question of becoming and being American, of being accepted, not "foreign."[14] Lee's writings have addressed these questions of identity, exile and diaspora, assimilation, and alienation.[3]

Awards and honors[edit]

In 2015, the American Library Association included On Such a Full Sea on their list of the year's Notable Books.[15]

Awards for Lee's writing
Year Title Award Result Ref.
1995 Native Speaker Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award Winner [16]
1996 Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Winner [17]
2000 A Gesture Life NAIBA Book of the Year Award Winner [18]
2000 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner [19]
2011 The Surrendered Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Finalist [20]
2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Winner [21]
2017 John Dos Passos Prize for Literature Winner [22]

Bibliography[edit]

Books[edit]

Articles[edit]

  • "The Faintest Echo of Our Language". The New England Review. 15 (3): 85–93. Summer 1993. doi:10.1056/NEJM183609140150601. JSTOR 40242683.
  • "Coming Home Again". The New Yorker. October 9, 1995.
  • "Gut Course: Manhattan". The New Yorker. 88 (38): 72–73. December 3, 2012.
  • "Sea Urchin". First Tastes. August 19 & 26, 2002. The New Yorker. 97 (27): 39. September 6, 2021.[25]

Screenplays[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Minzesheimer, Bob (March 16, 2010). "Chang-rae Lee's 'Surrendered': Unrelentingly sad yet lovely". USA Today. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
  2. ^ a b Garner, Dwight (September 5, 1999). "Interview: Adopted Voice". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 July 2018. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
  3. ^ a b c d e Wu, Yung-Hsing. "Chang-rae Lee." Asian- American Writers. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 312. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
  4. ^ Kakutani, Michiko (August 31, 1999). "'A Gesture Life': Fitting In Perfectly on the Outside, but Lost Within". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 17 January 2013. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
  5. ^ The Asian American Writers' Workshop - Awards Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ Dean, Tamsin (June 21, 2004). "High and dry". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2 March 2014. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
  7. ^ APALA Past Award Winners Archived February 22, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ "The 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners Fiction". Archived from the original on 2012-08-23. Retrieved 2011-04-23.
  9. ^ Leyshon, Cressida (January 7, 2014). "'The Chorus of "We": An Interview With Chang-rae Lee". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 8 January 2014. Retrieved 7 January 2014.
  10. ^ "National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists for Publishing Year 2014". National Book Critics Circle. January 19, 2015. Archived from the original on January 22, 2015. Retrieved January 29, 2015.
  11. ^ "Chang-rae Lee | Department of English". english.stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 2018-06-11. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  12. ^ a b "Chang-rae Lee | Penguin Random House". www.penguinrandomhouse.com. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  13. ^ Fassler, Joe. "Why Novel-Writing Is Like Spelunking: An Interview with Chang-rae Lee". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  14. ^ Matibag, E.(2010). Asian american art and literature. In Encyclopedia of American Studies. Retrieved from http://0-search.credoreference.com.library.simmons.edu/content/entry/jhueas/asian_american_art_and_literature/0
  15. ^ Wood, Leighann (2015-02-01). "2015 Notable Books announced: Year's best in fiction, nonfiction and poetry". American Library Association. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  16. ^ "Barnes & Noble Names Winners of the 27th Annual Discover Awards". Authorlink. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  17. ^ "List of PEN/Hemingway Winners". The Hemingway Society. Archived from the original on 2022-01-07. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  18. ^ "NAIBA Book of the Year Awards". New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association. Archived from the original on 2013-11-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  19. ^ "A Gesture Life". Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  20. ^ "Finalist: The Surrendered, by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Books)". Pulitzer Prize. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  21. ^ Morland, D. Verne. "Chang-rae Lee, 2011 Fiction Winner". Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Archived from the original on 2017-10-09. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  22. ^ "The John Dos Passos Prize for Literature: Past Recipients and Select Works". Longwood University. Archived from the original on 2020-10-23. Retrieved 2021-11-04.
  23. ^ Wood, James (15 March 2010). "A Critic at Large: Keeping it Real". The New Yorker. Vol. 86, no. 4. pp. 71–75. Archived from the original on 23 March 2011. Retrieved 16 January 2011.
  24. ^ "'My Year Abroad' Is A Fun Excursion — Just A Little Light On Substance". NPR.org. Archived from the original on 2021-02-02. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  25. ^ Online version is titled "How Sea Urchin Tastes". First published in the August 19&26, 2002 issue.

External links[edit]

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