Chang-rae Lee | |
|---|---|
 Chang-rae Lee speaks to aUniversity of Michigan class about his novelOn Such a Full Sea. | |
| Born | (1965-07-29)July 29, 1965 (age 59) South Korea |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | American (naturalized) |
| Education | Yale University (BA) University of Oregon (MFA) |
| Notable works | Native Speaker;Aloft |
| Notable awards | Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Asian American Literary Awards |
| Spouse | Michelle Branca |
| Korean name | |
| Hangul | 이창래 |
| Hanja | |
| Revised Romanization | I Chang-rae |
| McCune–Reischauer | Yi Ch'ang-rae |
Chang-rae Lee (born July 29, 1965) is aKorean-American novelist and a professor of creative writing atStanford University.[1] He was previously Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton and director ofPrinceton University's Program in Creative Writing.
Lee was born inSouth 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 attendedPhillips Exeter Academy inExeter, New Hampshire, before earning a B.A. in English atYale University in 1987.[3] After working as an equities analyst onWall Street for a year, he enrolled at theUniversity of Oregon. With the manuscript forNative 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]
Lee's first novel,Native Speaker (1995), won numerous awards including thePEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.[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 toassimilate 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 Koreancomfort women duringWorld War II.[4] For this book, Lee received theAsian American Literary Award.[5] His 2004 novelAloft received mixed notices from thecritics and featured Lee's first protagonist who is not Asian American, but a disengaged and isolated Italian-Americansuburbanite forced to deal with his world.[6] It received the 2006Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Adult Fiction category.[7] His 2010 novelThe Surrendered won the 2011Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was a nominated finalist for the2011 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 ofBaltimore, 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 2014National 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 atYonsei University inSeoul, South Korea.[12]
Lee has compared his writing process tospelunking. "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]
Lee explores issues central to theAsian-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]
In 2015, theAmerican Library Association includedOn Such a Full Sea on their list of the year's Notable Books.[15]
| Year | Title | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Native Speaker | Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award | — | Won | [16] |
| 1996 | PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel | — | Won | [17] | |
| 2000 | A Gesture Life | Anisfield-Wolf Book Award | Fiction | Won | [18] |
| NAIBA Book of the Year Award | — | Won | [19] | ||
| 2006 | Aloft | Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature | Fiction | Won | [20] |
| 2011 | The Surrendered | Dayton Literary Peace Prize | — | Won | [21] |
| Pulitzer Prize | Fiction | Finalist | [22] | ||
| 2017 | — | John Dos Passos Prize for Literature | — | Won | [23] |
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