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Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. His father, who was a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, relocated his family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University. His father spent a year in an Indonesian prison camp where he was tortured because of his belief in Christianity. In 1959 the Lee family fled the country to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964. Li-Young Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport. He has taught at several universities, including Northwestern University and the University of Iowa.
He is the author of Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001); The City in Which I Love You (1990), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry _Select_ion; and Rose (1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award; as well as a memoir entitled The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. His other honors include a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer's Award, grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, Donna, and their two sons.
Development as a poet
Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he began to develop his love for writing. He had seen his father find his passion for ministry and as a result of his father reading to him and encouraging Lee to find his passion, Lee began to dive into the art of language. Lee’s writing has also been influenced by classic Chinese poets, Li Bo and Tu Fu. Many of Lee’s poems are filled with themes of simplicity, strength, and silence. All are strongly influenced by his family history, childhood, and individuality. He writes with simplicity and passion which creates images that take the reader deeper and also requires his audience to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. These feelings of exile and boldness to rebel take shape as they provide common themes for many of his poems.
Lee often writes from personal experience and uses poetry to tell his own story, which resonates with a wide spectrum of readers because of its universal themes.
Career
Lee has attended the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport. He has taught at Stanford University, Northwestern University, the University of Iowa, the Asian American Writers Workshop in New York City, and Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco.
Lee's poems have also been published in three Pushcart Prize: Best of Small Presses
His most recent book, Behind My Eyes, was published by W.W. Norton in January 2008.
Lee’s influence on Asian American poetry
Li-Young Lee has been an established Asian American poet who has been doing interviews for the past twenty years. Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (BOA Editions, 2006, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll), is the first edited and published collection of interviews with an Asian American poet. In this collection, Earl G. Ingersoll asks "conversational" questions to bring out Lee’s views on Asian American poetry, writing, and identity.
Awards and honors
Lee has won numerous poetry awards:[1]
2003: Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, which does not accept applications and which includes a $25,000 stipend
2002: William Carlos Williams Award for Book of My Nights (American Poets Continuum) Judge: Carolyn Kizer
1990: Lamont Poetry _Select_ion for The City in Which I Love You
Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University, for Rose
American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for The Winged Seed: A Remembrance
1988: Whiting Writer's Award
Lannan Literary Award
Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts
Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Grant, Illinois Arts Council
Grant, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Grant, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
_Select_ed bibliography
Poetry
1986: Rose. Rochester: BOA Editions Limited, ISBN 0-918526-53-1
1990: The City In Which I Love You. Rochester: BOA Editions Limited, ISBN 0-918526-83-3
2001: Book of My Nights. Rochester: BOA Editions Limited, ISBN 1-929918-08-9
2008: Behind My Eyes. W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0-393-06542-8
Memoir
The Wingéd Seed: A Remembrance. (hardcover) New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ASIN: B000NGRB2G (paperback) St. Paul: Ruminator, 1999. ISBN 1-886913-28-5
See also
Literature Portal
List of Asian American writers
Critical studies
as of March 2008:
Meaning Maker By: Butts, Lisa; Publishers Weekly, 2007 Nov 19; 254 (56): 38.
Li-Young Lee no hyoka o tooshite By: Kajiwara, Teruko; Eigo Seinen/Rising Generation, 2006 July; 152 (4): 212-13.
Transcendentalism, Ethnicity, and Food in the Work of Li-Young Lee By: Xu, Wenying; Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, 2006 Summer; 33 (2): 129-57.
An Exile's Will to Canon and Its Tension with Ethnicity: Li-Young Lee By: Xu, Wenying. IN: Bona and Maini, Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates. Albany, NY: State U of New York P; 2006. pp. 145-64
Li-Young Lee By: Davis, Rocío G.. IN: Madsen, Asian American Writers. Detroit, MI: Gale; 2005. pp. 202-06
'Your Otherness Is Perfect as My Death': The Ethics and Aesthetics of Li-Young Lee's Poetry By: Zhou, Xiaojing. IN: Fahraeus and Jonsson, Textual Ethos Studies or Locating Ethics. New York, NY: Rodopi; 2005. pp. 297-314
Sexual Desire and Cultural Memory in Three Ethnic Poets By: Basford, Douglas; MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 2004 Fall-Winter; 29 (3-4): 243-56.
The Politics of Ethnic Authorship: Li-Young Lee, Emerson, and Whitman at the Banquet Table By: Partridge, Jeffrey F. L.; Studies in the Literary Imagination, 2004 Spring; 37 (1): 101-26.
Interview with Li-Young Lee By: Bilyak, Dianne; Massachusetts Review: A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts and Public Affairs, 2003-2004 Winter; 44 (4): 600-12.
Poetries of Transformation: Joy Harjo and Li-Young Lee By: Kolosov, Jacqueline; Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, 2003 Summer; 15 (2): 39-57.
"Father-Stem and Mother-Root": Genealogy, Memory, and the Poetics of Origins in Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, and Li-Young Lee By: Malandra, Marc Joseph; Dissertation, Cornell U, 2002.
Forming Personal and Cultural Identities in the Face of Exodus: A Discussion of Li-Young Lee's Poetry By: Jenkins, Tricia; South Asian Review, 2003; 24 (2): 199-210.
Lee's 'Eating Alone' By: Moeser, Daniel; Explicator, 2002 Winter; 60 (2): 117-19.
The Way a Calendar Dissolves: A Refugee's Sense of Time in the Work of Li-Young Lee By: Lorenz, Johnny. IN: Davis and Ludwig, Asian American Literature in the International Context: Readings on Fiction, Poetry, and Performance. Hamburg, Germany: Lit; 2002. pp. 157-69
Night of No Exile By: Jones, Marie C.; Dissertation, U of North Texas, 1999.
Art, Spirituality, and the Ethic of Care: Alternative Masculinities in Chinese American Literature By: Cheung, King-Kok. IN: Gardiner, Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions. New York, NY: Columbia UP; 2002. pp. 261-89
The Precision of Persimmons: Hybridity, Grafting and the Case of Li-Young Lee By: Yao, Steven G.; Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, 2001 Apr; 12 (1): 1-23.
To Witness the Invisible: A Talk with Li-Young Lee By: Marshall, Tod; Kenyon Review, 2000 Winter; 22 (1): 129-47.
Beyond Lot's Wife: The Immigration Poems of Marilyn Chin, Garrett Hongo, Li-Young Lee, and David Mura By: Slowik, Mary; MELUS, 2000 Fall-Winter; 25 (3-4): 221-42.
Form and Identity in Language Poetry and Asian American Poetry By: Yu, Timothy; Contemporary Literature, 2000 Spring; 41 (3): 422-61.
An Interview with Li-Young Lee By: Fluharty, Matthew; Missouri Review, 2000; 23 (1): 81-99.
Li-Young Lee By: Lee, James Kyung-Jin. IN: Cheung, Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, with UCLA Asian American Studies Center; 2000. pp. 270-80
Necessary Figures: Metaphor, Irony and Parody in the Poetry of Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, and John Yau By: Wang, Dorothy Joan; Dissertation,U of California, Berkeley, 1998.
A Conversation with Li-Young Lee; Indiana Review, 1999 Fall-Winter; 21 (2): 101-08.
The Cultural Predicaments of Ethnic Writers: Three Chicago Poets By: Bresnahan, Roger J. Jiang; Midwestern Miscellany, 1999 Fall; 27: 36-46.
The City in Which I Love You: Li-Young Lee's Excellent Song By: Hesford, Walter A.; Christianity and Literature, 1996 Autumn; 46 (1): 37-60.
Lee's 'Persimmons' By: Engles, Tim; Explicator, 1996 Spring; 54 (3): 191-92.
Inheritance and Invention in Li-Young Lee's Poetry By: Zhou, Xiaojing; MELUS, 1996 Spring; 21 (1): 113-32.
Li-Young Lee By: Hsu, Ruth Y.. IN: Conte, American Poets since World War II: Fourth Series. Detroit: Thomson Gale; 1996. pp. 139-46
Li-Young Lee By: Lee, James; BOMB, 1995 Spring; 51: 10-13.