Mary Paik Lee (August 17, 1900 – February 14, 1995"California Death Index, 1940-1997," database, ''FamilySearch'' (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VP3M-MY4 : 26 November 2014), Mary Paik Lee, 14 Feb 1995; Department of Public Health Services, Sacramento.) was a Korean American writer most known for her autobiography, ''Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America''. She was born in the

Korean Empire The Korean Empire () was a Korean monarchical state proclaimed in October 1897 by Emperor Gojong of the Joseon dynasty. The empire stood until Japan's annexation of Korea in August 1910. During the Korean Empire, Emperor Gojong oversaw the Gwa ...

and moved to the United States in 1905, eventually settling in Riverside,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

in 1906. Over the course of her life, Lee, her parents, and her husband would suffer many hardships. Her memoir, ''Quiet Odyssey'', was published in 1990. It is noted for being one of the few memoirs by an Asian American woman, and the only memoir by a

Korean American Korean Americans are Americans of Korean ancestry (mostly from South Korea). In 2015, the Korean-American community constituted about 0.56% of the United States population, or about 1.82 million people, and was the fifth-largest Asian Americans ...

woman that covers the majority of the twentieth century. She provides an important cultural viewpoint on the last century, from the perspective of one of America's first Korean pioneers.

Biography

Lee was born Paek Kuang-Sun in

Pyongyang Pyongyang (, , ) is the capital and largest city of North Korea, where it is known as the "Capital of the Revolution". Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. According to the 2008 populatio ...

(now the capital of

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

) in the Korean Empire in 1900. Her father, Paik Sin Koo, came from a line of ministers and teachers. They moved to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

in 1905 in response to the forced annexation of Korea by the

Japanese Empire The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent forma ...

. When they arrived in Hawaii, her father became a contract laborer on a sugar plantation. After facing extreme discrimination, they moved to Riverside, California in 1906. The Paik family arrived in

Riverside Riverside may refer to: Places Australia * Riverside, Tasmania, a suburb of Launceston, Tasmania Canada * Riverside (electoral district), in the Yukon * Riverside, Calgary, a neighbourhood in Alberta * Riverside, Manitoba, a former rural m ...

without much money or any immediate plans. After conferring with friends, they decided that Lee's mother could cook for about 30 men. Her father didn't want her to work, but they did not have much choice. They had to borrow materials from Chinese immigrants in order to start the cooking business. On Saturdays, Mary would go to the slaughterhouse and collect the animal organs that the butchers threw out and thought not appropriate to sell. She competed with Mexican children for the preferred pieces of meat while the butchers laughed at them. At one point, she told her father that she didn't want to continue going because they were making fun of her but her father told her to be grateful that the butchers threw out the meat, or else they would starve. When Mary was old enough, she went to school. On her first day, she was intimidated and frightened by a group of girls who danced in a circle around her. She was also frightened when the teacher welcomed her so she ran back home. She also found out that their Korean names were hard to remember so she decided to give her younger siblings American names while they were young. She and her older brother decided that it was too late for them to have American names. She published her biography in 1990 and died in San Francisco, California in 1995.

Personal life

Mary married H.M. Lee and had 3 sons. She also continued to provide assistance to her parents and siblings. Though there was a constant battle with prejudice and discrimination, she worked hard to provide.

References

Bibliography

Chiu, Monica. "Constructing 'Home' in Mary Paik Lee's Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America." Ed. Susan L. Roberson.U of Missouri P, 1998. 121-136. ProQuest. Web. 19 Sep. 2013. Fujita-Rony, Dorothy. "A Shared Pacific Arena: Empire, Agriculture, and the Life Narratives of Mary Paik Lee, Angeles Monrayo, and Mary Tomita." Frontiers 34.2 (2013): 25,51,272. ProQuest. Web. 18 Sep. 2013.

External links

Short biography and photo

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Mary Paik 1900 births 1995 deaths Korean emigrants to the United States Korean women writers American writers of Korean descent People from Pyongyang 20th-century American women writers 20th-century Korean women American people of North Korean descent