She was the kind of author I preferred because once I finished one book, I could just pick up another. At the library, Lenski’s books populated whole shelves. ![]() It creaked all the way home.ĭuring elementary school, as a new reader of English-language books, I discovered Lois Lenski, a prolific American writer and daughter of an immigrant. We loaded up our metal grocery cart with its tilted black wheels and white plastic hubs. We could borrow as many books as we liked, he said. In our first year in America, Uncle John took my two sisters and me to the library in Elmhurst and got us cards. A year later, we came to Elmhurst, Queens, where Uncle John, his wife and their two American-born daughters lived. ![]() company man, sponsored his younger sister’s family to immigrate from South Korea. hired him as a programmer, where he worked for most of his life. Not long after, he got a job at an insurance company, then, later, I.B.M. The former history graduate student read library books on computer science. He noticed that computer programmers had high starting salaries, so he borrowed books on programming. On a day off, Uncle John went to the New York Public Library to check the classifieds. His knife moves across the thick porcelain plate, making a thud sound as food hits a plastic bag. A young man wears a white waiter’s shirt and black worker’s slacks and stands over a bin. In my mind, I can still see Uncle John’s handsome face with the square jawline, thick eyebrows highlighting his large dark eyes, the same shape as my mother’s. Though hungry, he’d scrape French fries off dinner plates and toss bowls of spaghetti into garbage bins. If he was caught eating any of it, his boss would threaten to fire him. When he cleared the tables, diners left food untouched on their plates. for a master’s in history but ran out of money.įor a time, he worked as a waiter. After getting his degree from the University of Central Missouri, he headed to N.Y.U. In Warrensburg, he managed to study history, get married and have a daughter. Kim arrived in Missouri as a student a few years after the Korean War. He came to the United States when he was 23 - the age my son is now. Uncle John was the second son of a Presbyterian minister, the headmaster of an orphanage school. On Zoom, I tell my college students: “I know it’s lousy right now, but it’ll get better. I’ve had some troubling news, and had to gather myself and remember how to solve knotty problems. I miss the happy laughter of the children. The elementary school across the street has been closed. Lee, a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, received the 2000 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the 2002 William Peden Prize from the Missouri Review, and the 2004 NarrativePrize.This past year, I’ve spent most of my time in my drafty office in Harlem, where the water leak from the lintel above the south-facing window has reappeared after some bad weather. Lee’s debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was a top-10 pick for NPR’s Fresh Air, the Times (London), and USA Today. Her writings about books, food, global affairs, and travel have appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, the Guardian, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, the Times, the Times Literary Supplement, Travel + Leisure, Vogue, and the Wall Street Journal, and she served for three seasons as a columnist for the Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s leading newspaper. Lee is currently researching and writing her third novel, which explores the role of education for Koreans around the world for her diaspora trilogy The Koreans, which includes Free Food for Millionaires (Grand Central Publishing, 2007) and Pachinko (Grand Central Publishing, 2017).Ī New York Times best seller, Pachinko was a finalist for the National Book Award and was named to more than 75 best books lists globally, including the top-10 lists of the BBC, the New York Public Library, the New York Times, and USA Today. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, she studied history at Yale College, then received a JD from Georgetown University Law Center. Min Jin Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Queens, New York. This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.
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