Chang-rae Lee (born July 29, 1965) is a Korean-American novelist and a professor of creative writing at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. He was previously Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton and director of

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

's Program in Creative Writing.

Early life

Lee was born in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

in 1965 to Young Yong and Inja Hong Lee. He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was 3 years old 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 (not for oneself) la, Finis Origine Pendet (The End Depends Upon the Beginning) gr, Χάριτι Θεοῦ (By the Grace of God) , location = 20 Main Street , city = Exeter, New Hampshire , zipcode ...

Exeter, New Hampshire Exeter is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 16,049 at the 2020 census, up from 14,306 at the 2010 census. Exeter was the county seat until 1997, when county offices were moved to neighboring Brentwood. ...

, before earning a B.A. in English at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1987. After working as an equities analyst on

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

for a year, he enrolled at the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

. With the manuscript for ''

Native Speaker Native Speaker may refer to: * ''Native Speaker'' (novel), a 1995 novel by Chang-Rae Lee * ''Native Speaker'' (album), a 2011 album by Canadian band Braids * Native speaker, a person using their first language or mother tongue {{disambigua ...

'' 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, ''

'', 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, ''

'' (1995), won numerous awards including the

Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award The PEN/Hemingway Award is awarded annually to a full-length novel or book of short stories by an American author who has not previously published a full-length book of fiction. The award is named after Ernest Hemingway and funded by the Hemingway ...

. 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 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. For this book, Lee received the Asian-American Literary Award. His 2004 novel '' Aloft'' received mixed notices from the

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...

s and featured Lee's first protagonist who is not Asian American, but a disengaged and isolated Italian-American

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

anite forced to deal with his world. It received the 2006 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Adult Fiction category. His 2010 novel ''

The Surrendered ''The Surrendered'' is a novel by Chang-Rae Lee about the lives of three characters during the Korean War. The novel also flashes back to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and flashes forward to the 1980s in New York City and Italy. The book make ...

'' won the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was a nominated finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Lee's next novel, ''On Such a Full Sea'' (2014) is set in a dystopian future version of the American city of

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

called B-Mor where the main character, Fan, is a Chinese-American laborer working as a diver in a fish farm. It was a finalist for the 2014

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English". He was also a Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yonsei University in South Korea. Lee has compared his writing process to

spelunking Caving – also known as spelunking in the United States and Canada and potholing in the United Kingdom and Ireland – is the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems (as distinguished from show caves). In contrast, speleology is ...

. "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."

Major themes

Lee explores issues central to the

Asian-American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous people ...

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." Lee's writings have addressed these questions of identity, exile and diaspora, assimilation, and alienation.

Awards and honors

* 1995 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for ''Native Speaker'' * 1996 Pen/Hemingway Award for ''Native Speaker'' * NAIBA Book of the Year Award for ''A Gesture Life'' * 2000 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for ''A Gesture Life'' * 2011 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for ''The Surrendered'' * 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for ''The Surrendered'' * 2015 ALA Notable Book of the Year for ''On Such A Full Sea'' * 2017 John Dos Passos Prize for Literature

Bibliography

Books

* ''

'' (Riverhead, 1994) * '' A Gesture Life'' (Riverhead, 1999) * ''Aloft'' (Riverhead, 2004) * ''

'' (Riverhead, 2010) * '' On Such a Full Sea'' (Riverhead, 2014) * ''My Year Abroad'' (2021)

Articles

* * * * 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 Wayne Wang (; born January 12, 1949) is a Hong Kong Americans, Hong Kong–American Film director, director, Film producer, producer, and screenwriter. Considered a pioneer of Asian-American cinema, he was one of the first Chinese Americans, ...

, 2019)

References

External links

"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 Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

Interview with Lee
at

Words on a Wire A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...

KGNU Claudia Cragg radio interview with Chang-Rae Lee, March 2011, on 'The Surrendered'. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Chang-Rae 1965 births Living people 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American male novelists American writers of Korean descent The New Yorker people People from Princeton, New Jersey People from Westchester County, New York Phillips Exeter Academy alumni Princeton University faculty South Korean emigrants to the United States University of Oregon alumni Novelists from New Jersey Novelists from Oregon Yale University alumni American novelists of Asian descent Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winners American Book Award winners 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers Novelists from New York (state)