Chang-Rae Lee
{{Short description|Korean-American novelist (born 1965)}}
{{family name hatnote|Lee|lang=Korean}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Chang-rae Lee
| image = Chang-rae Lee at UMich.jpg
| caption = Chang-rae Lee speaks to a University of Michigan class about his novel On Such a Full Sea.
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1965|7|29}}
| birth_place = South Korea
| death_date =
| death_place =
| education = Yale University (BA)
University of Oregon (MFA)
| occupation = Novelist
| nationality = American (naturalized)
| notableworks = Native Speaker; Aloft
| spouse = Michelle Branca
| awards = Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature
Asian American Literary Awards
| module = {{Infobox Korean name
|hangul=이창래
| hanja={{linktext|李|昌|來}}
| rr=I Chang-rae
| mr=Yi Ch'ang-rae
| child = yes}}
}}
Chang-rae Lee (born July 29, 1965) is a Korean-American novelist and a professor of creative writing at Stanford University.{{cite news|last=Minzesheimer|first=Bob|title=Chang-rae Lee's 'Surrendered': Unrelentingly sad yet lovely|url=https://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2010-03-16-lee16_ST_N.htm|access-date=31 March 2011|newspaper=USA Today|date=March 16, 2010}} He was previously Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton and director of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.
Early life
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 {{cite news|last=Garner|first=Dwight|title=Interview: Adopted Voice|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/books/interview-adopted-voice.html?ref=changraelee|access-date=31 March 2011|newspaper=The New York Times|date=September 5, 1999|archive-date=20 July 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180720135959/https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/books/interview-adopted-voice.html?ref=changraelee|url-status=live}} to join his father, who was then a psychiatric resident and later established a successful practice in Westchester County, New York.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. 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. 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. 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.
Career
Lee's first novel, Native Speaker (1995), won numerous awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. 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. 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.{{cite news|last=Kakutani|first=Michiko|title='A Gesture Life': Fitting In Perfectly on the Outside, but Lost Within|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/08/29/daily/083199lee-book-review.html|access-date=31 March 2011|newspaper=The New York Times|date=August 31, 1999|archive-date=17 January 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130117005444/http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/08/29/daily/083199lee-book-review.html|url-status=live}} For this book, Lee received the Asian American Literary Award.[http://aaww.org/aaww_awards.html The Asian American Writers' Workshop - Awards] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718223825/http://www.aaww.org/aaww_awards.html |date=2011-07-18 }} 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.{{cite news|last=Dean|first=Tamsin|title=High and dry|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3619235/High-and-dry.html|access-date=31 March 2011|newspaper=The Telegraph|date=June 21, 2004|archive-date=2 March 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140302032718/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3619235/High-and-dry.html|url-status=live}} It received the 2006 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Adult Fiction category.[http://www.apalaweb.org/awards/literature-awards/past-literature-award-winners/ APALA Past Award Winners] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110222010333/http://www.apalaweb.org/awards/literature-awards/past-literature-award-winners/ |date=February 22, 2011 }} His 2010 novel The Surrendered won the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was a nominated finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.{{Cite web |url=http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2011-Fiction |title=The 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners Fiction |access-date=2011-04-23 |archive-date=2012-08-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120823070756/http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2011-Fiction |url-status=live }} 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.{{cite news|last=Leyshon|first=Cressida|title='The Chorus of "We": An Interview With Chang-rae Lee|url=http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/01/the-chorus-of-we-an-interview-with-chang-rae-lee.html|access-date=7 January 2014|magazine=The New Yorker|date=January 7, 2014|archive-date=8 January 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140108185004/http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/01/the-chorus-of-we-an-interview-with-chang-rae-lee.html|url-status=live}} It was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award.{{cite web|url=http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/national-book-critics-circle-announces-its-finalists-for-publishing-year-20|title=National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists for Publishing Year 2014|date=January 19, 2015|publisher=National Book Critics Circle|access-date=January 29, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150122224418/http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/national-book-critics-circle-announces-its-finalists-for-publishing-year-20|archive-date=January 22, 2015|url-status=dead}}
In 2016, Lee joined the faculty of Stanford University, where he is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English.{{Cite web|url=https://english.stanford.edu/people/chang-rae-lee|title=Chang-rae Lee {{!}} Department of English|website=english.stanford.edu|language=en|access-date=2018-05-12|archive-date=2018-06-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180611083522/https://english.stanford.edu/people/chang-rae-lee|url-status=live}} He previously taught creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.{{Cite web|url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/230002/chang-rae-lee|title=Chang-rae Lee {{!}} Penguin Random House|website=www.penguinrandomhouse.com|language=en-US|access-date=2018-05-12|archive-date=2018-05-13|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180513011304/https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/230002/chang-rae-lee|url-status=live}} He was also a Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.
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."{{Cite news|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/03/why-novel-writing-is-like-spelunking-an-interview-with-chang-rae-lee/71843/|title=Why Novel-Writing Is Like Spelunking: An Interview with Chang-rae Lee|last=Fassler|first=Joe|work=The Atlantic|access-date=2018-05-12|language=en-US|archive-date=2018-05-13|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180513080914/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/03/why-novel-writing-is-like-spelunking-an-interview-with-chang-rae-lee/71843/|url-status=live}}
Major themes
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."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 Lee's writings have addressed these questions of identity, exile and diaspora, assimilation, and alienation.
Awards and honors
In 2015, the American Library Association included On Such a Full Sea on their list of the year's Notable Books.{{Cite news |last=Wood |first=Leighann |date=2015-02-01 |title=2015 Notable Books announced: Year's best in fiction, nonfiction and poetry |url=http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2015/02/2015-notable-books-announced-year-s-best-fiction-nonfiction-and-poetry |access-date=2018-05-12 |work=American Library Association |language=en |archive-date=2018-05-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180513011519/http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2015/02/2015-notable-books-announced-year-s-best-fiction-nonfiction-and-poetry |url-status=live }}
Bibliography
{{Incomplete list|date=December 2014}}
=Books=
- Native Speaker (Riverhead, 1994)
- A Gesture Life (Riverhead, 1999)
- Aloft (Riverhead, 2004)
- The Surrendered (Riverhead, 2010){{cite magazine |last=Wood |first=James |author-link=James Wood (critic) |date=15 March 2010 |title=A Critic at Large: Keeping it Real |magazine=The New Yorker |volume=86 |issue=4 |pages=71–75 |url=http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/03/15/100315crat_atlarge_wood |access-date=16 January 2011 |archive-date=23 March 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110323021742/http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/03/15/100315crat_atlarge_wood |url-status=live }}
- On Such a Full Sea (Riverhead, 2014)
- My Year Abroad (2021){{Cite web|title='My Year Abroad' Is A Fun Excursion — Just A Little Light On Substance|url=https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961527499/my-year-abroad-is-a-fun-excursion-just-a-little-light-on-substance|access-date=2021-02-02|website=NPR.org|language=en|archive-date=2021-02-02|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210202105755/https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961527499/my-year-abroad-is-a-fun-excursion-just-a-little-light-on-substance|url-status=live}}
=Articles=
- {{cite journal |date=Summer 1993 |title=The Faintest Echo of Our Language |journal=The New England Review |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=85–93 |doi=10.1056/NEJM183609140150601 |jstor=40242683 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/2122448 }}
- {{cite journal |date=October 9, 1995 |title=Coming Home Again |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/10/16/coming-home-again |journal=The New Yorker }}
- {{cite journal |date=December 3, 2012 |title=Gut Course: Manhattan |journal=The New Yorker |volume=88 |issue=38 |pages=72–73 |url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/03/manhattan-5 }}
- {{cite journal |date=September 6, 2021 |title=Sea Urchin |department=First Tastes. August 19 & 26, 2002 |journal=The New Yorker |volume=97 |issue=27 |pages=39 |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/06/magazine20020819sea-urchin }}Online version is titled "How Sea Urchin Tastes". First published in the August 19&26, 2002 issue.
=Screenplays=
- Coming Home Again (co-written and directed by Wayne Wang, 2019)
References
{{reflist}}
External links
{{wikiquote}}
{{Portal|Biography}}
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=TT8FqGokPL4C&pg=PA104 "Mute in an English-Only World"], an essay by Lee in the anthology Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing Up in America, at Google Books
- [http://wordsonawireradioshow.blogspot.com/2011/11/listen-to-sixth-show-from-sunday.html Interview with Lee] at Words on a Wire
- [http://ccragg123.libsyn.com/-the-surrendered-author-chang-rae-lee-] KGNU Claudia Cragg radio interview with Chang-Rae Lee, March 2011, on 'The Surrendered'.
{{American Book Awards}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Chang-Rae}}
Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:American male novelists
Category:American writers of Korean descent
Category:The New Yorker people
Category:Writers from Princeton, New Jersey
Category:People from Westchester County, New York
Category:Phillips Exeter Academy alumni
Category:Princeton University faculty
Category:South Korean emigrants to the United States
Category:University of Oregon alumni
Category:Novelists from New Jersey
Category:Novelists from Oregon
Category:Yale University alumni
Category:American novelists of Asian descent
Category:Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winners
Category:American Book Award winners
Category:20th-century American male writers