Chang-Rae Lee Explained

Chang-rae Lee
Birth Date:29 July 1965
Birth Place:South Korea
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:
Hangul:이창래
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.[1] He was previously Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton and director of Princeton'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 [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

Lee's first novel, Native Speaker (1995), won numerous awards including the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. 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.[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.

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

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

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!
1995Native SpeakerBarnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers AwardWinner[16]
1996Winner[17]
2000NAIBA Book of the Year Award Winner[18]
2000Anisfield-Wolf Book AwardWinner[19]
2011Pulitzer Prize for FictionFinalist[20]
2011Dayton Literary Peace PrizeWinner[21]
2017Winner[22]

Bibliography

Books

Articles

Screenplays

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: Minzesheimer. Bob. Chang-rae Lee's 'Surrendered': Unrelentingly sad yet lovely. 31 March 2011. USA Today. March 16, 2010.
  2. News: Garner. Dwight. Interview: Adopted Voice. 31 March 2011. The New York Times. September 5, 1999. 20 July 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180720135959/https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/books/interview-adopted-voice.html?ref=changraelee. live.
  3. 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. News: Kakutani. Michiko. 'A Gesture Life': Fitting In Perfectly on the Outside, but Lost Within. 31 March 2011. The New York Times. August 31, 1999. 17 January 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130117005444/http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/08/29/daily/083199lee-book-review.html. live.
  5. http://aaww.org/aaww_awards.html The Asian American Writers' Workshop - Awards
  6. News: Dean. Tamsin. High and dry. 31 March 2011. The Telegraph. June 21, 2004. 2 March 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140302032718/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3619235/High-and-dry.html. live.
  7. http://www.apalaweb.org/awards/literature-awards/past-literature-award-winners/ APALA Past Award Winners
  8. Web site: The 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners Fiction . 2011-04-23 . 2012-08-23 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120823070756/http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2011-Fiction . live .
  9. News: Leyshon. Cressida. 'The Chorus of "We": An Interview With Chang-rae Lee. 7 January 2014. The New Yorker. January 7, 2014. 8 January 2014. 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. live.
  10. Web site: National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists for Publishing Year 2014. January 19, 2015. National Book Critics Circle. January 29, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150122224418/http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/national-book-critics-circle-announces-its-finalists-for-publishing-year-20. January 22, 2015. dead.
  11. Web site: Chang-rae Lee Department of English. english.stanford.edu. en. 2018-05-12. 2018-06-11. https://web.archive.org/web/20180611083522/https://english.stanford.edu/people/chang-rae-lee. live.
  12. Web site: Chang-rae Lee Penguin Random House. www.penguinrandomhouse.com. en-US. 2018-05-12. 2018-05-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20180513011304/https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/230002/chang-rae-lee. live.
  13. News: Why Novel-Writing Is Like Spelunking: An Interview with Chang-rae Lee. Fassler. Joe. The Atlantic. 2018-05-12. en-US. 2018-05-13. 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/. live.
  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. News: Wood . Leighann . 2015-02-01 . 2015 Notable Books announced: Year's best in fiction, nonfiction and poetry . 2018-05-12 . . en . 2018-05-13 . 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 . live .
  16. News: Barnes & Noble Names Winners of the 27th Annual Discover Awards . 2018-05-12 . Authorlink . en-US . 2018-05-13 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180513080907/https://authorlink.com/award-winner/barnes-noble-names-winners-of-the-27th-annual-discover-awards-2018/ . live .
  17. Web site: List of PEN/Hemingway Winners . 2018-05-12 . . en . 2022-01-07 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220107224819/https://www.hemingwaysociety.org/list-penhemingway-winners . live .
  18. Web site: NAIBA Book of the Year Awards . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20131113010101/http://www.naiba.com/?page=BooksoftheYear . 2013-11-13 . 2018-05-12 . New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association.
  19. News: A Gesture Life . 2018-05-12 . . en-US . 2018-05-13 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180513080839/http://www.anisfield-wolf.org/books/a-gesture-life/ . live .
  20. Web site: Finalist: The Surrendered, by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Books) . 2018-05-12 . . en . 2018-05-13 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180513011416/http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/chang-rae-lee . live .
  21. Web site: Morland . D. Verne . Chang-rae Lee, 2011 Fiction Winner . 2018-05-12 . . 2017-10-09 . https://web.archive.org/web/20171009165413/http://daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/2011-fiction_winner.htm . live .
  22. Web site: The John Dos Passos Prize for Literature: Past Recipients and Select Works . 2021-11-04 . . 2020-10-23 . https://web.archive.org/web/20201023063026/http://www.longwood.edu/english/dos-passos-prize/past-recipients-and-select-works/ . live .
  23. Wood . James . James Wood (critic) . 15 March 2010 . A Critic at Large: Keeping it Real . . 86 . 4 . 71–75 . 16 January 2011 . 23 March 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110323021742/http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/03/15/100315crat_atlarge_wood . live .
  24. Web site: 'My Year Abroad' Is A Fun Excursion — Just A Little Light On Substance. 2021-02-02. NPR.org. en. 2021-02-02. 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. live.
  25. Online version is titled "How Sea Urchin Tastes". First published in the August 19&26, 2002 issue.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Chang-Rae Lee".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.