MIN JIN LEE'S PLATFORM IS NICHE, BUT IT'S MIGHTY
Korean American author doesn't take recent recognition for granted
One minute before our scheduled interview, author Min Jin Lee picks up the phone on the first ring.
“Cool people would wait until the second ring, but I'm just going to show right up and be early because I've got nothing to prove anymore,” she jokes. “I'm just such a nerd.”
Earlier this month, the 53-year-old Korean American author was in Seoul, where she was awarded the 2022 Manhae Grand Prize for literature.
She was also there for events commemorating the completely new Korean translation of her bestselling 2017 novel, Pachinko.
The translation was released this month, sparking rumours about a record publishing deal. (Lee declined to make comments about the monetary figure but said the new edition is more accurate.)
Pachinko — an epic tracking four generations of a Korean family — was also recently adapted into a critically acclaimed TV show for Apple TV+, starring Youn Yuh-jung. The first season of the show, which Lee has said she has “no comment” on, was released in March.
These days, Lee is working on her third novel, American Hagwon, about Korean after-school academies or “cram schools,” and Name Recognition, a nonfiction book. She is also the writer in residence at Amherst College.
Between official events in South Korea, she was able to reconnect with far-flung family. Lee said it was a “really lovely homecoming” to be able to spend time in the country, where she was born, especially because her parents were able to make the trip.
Q Your work has obviously been recognized before, but this trip seems to mark a certain kind of validation, if that's the right word?
A The Manhae Prize — it was really important for me to show up to accept it. Obviously it's such an honour to get it, but also as an American writer of Korean descent, I'm the first one.
Recognition of a person like you and me, diasporic Koreans, by an establishment organization, is personally very, very meaningful, because I've studied so much about diasporic Koreans and our experience of not being accepted. I've also interviewed enough people in Korea who feel rejected and left behind. So there's an interesting dynamic, and I would love to see a kind of bridge being built by our work and our recognition of what it is to be Korean around the world.
Q In the last few years particularly, you've been an active voice in speaking up about antiasian rhetoric and violence. One of the things I grapple with when I report on it is, like with mass shootings, how much reporting makes it worse and inspires new violence? Do you have thoughts about that?
A I think that the assertion that the reporting of these events will incite more violence and copycat behaviour is an assertion. Unless I see credible evidence, showing that causation — and also, if I can have the counter evidence that if we don't report on it, that it goes away — I will remain unconvinced. I think it's just another way to make us put ugly news underneath the carpet, just to brush it aside. And I find that really problematic.
I have a very limited, very niche platform. If I can use it to draw attention and to make people realize that it's not OK to punch out our elders, and that people like our parents and you and I should not be afraid to take the train or go to work, or go to our home, or stay out late at night, I try.
Q People are always interested in a writer's process. Can you tell us about yours?
A I read that Willa Cather read a chapter of the Bible every day. So I thought, I'm going to try that. So now I read a chapter of the Bible every day, before I start writing fiction. I've done it since 1995. I must have read it, literally from page to page, about seven times. It has been so helpful to understand how things are written, with a long scope.
If you want to understand literature, especially Western literature, it's almost impossible to do so without a very deep understanding of the Bible, as well as mythology — I mean, Shakespeare knew it cold. So,
I'm such a huge fan of doing this, you couldn't really get me to stop now.