faculty at Hunter College and then at Princeton.
Lee now lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his
wife and two daughters.
Each of Lee’s novels concerns a protagonist who
must find a way to live in the aftermath of past
traumas. Henry Park of Native Speaker contends
with the death of his son and his father as well as
the estrangement of his wife and a failed assign-
ment at work. In A Gesture Life, Franklin Hata’s
ordeals are most distant, centered on his service in
World War II and the troubled adolescence of his
grown daughter. In Aloft, Jerry Battle’s family life
continues to crumble years after the death of his
first wife. Henry, Doc Hata, and Jerry each have a
distinct narrating voice that Lee says “reflects and
articulates that particular character.” All the pro-
tagonists are men older than Lee, whether middle-
aged, elderly, or recently retired, and none is willing
or able to connect emotionally with others. These
men are surrounded by equally flinty women,
whether wives or daughters (mothers are seldom
in the picture), making family reconciliation a
challenge for the characters and an important plot
thread. Ethnic identity is another important theme
in Lee’s novels, though his characters seldom rail
against discrimination. Instead, most are accepted
into the mainstream with little overt trouble and
are attracted by others’ racial and cultural differ-
ences. Lee’s novels thus explore the challenges of
inclusion, featuring mixed-race families and char-
acters who must struggle to define their identities.
Lee’s self-declared influences include James
Joyce, James Agee, Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman,
Ernest Hemingway, and Yukio Mishima. He has
also been compared to Kazuo Ishiguro for the pas-
sivity of his protagonists, John Cheever for his lit-
erary portrayal of New York’s suburbs, and Ralph
Ellison for what Tim Engles describes as their
“allegorized depiction of a racial identity search.”
Kenneth Quan distinguishes him from the previ-
ous generation of Asian-American writers, includ-
ing MAXINE HONG KINGSTON, FRANK CHIN, and
AMY TAN: While they dealt with racial issues more
overtly in accordance with the political issues of
their day, Lee is free to handle the subject under
a larger umbrella of questions of identity. Despite
his different approach, the degree of critical inter-
est generated by his first three novels suggests that
Lee will ultimately be regarded on a par with these
classic Asian-American authors.Bibliography
Engles, Tim. “ ‘Visions of Me in the Whitest Raw
Light’: Assimilation and Doxic Whiteness in
Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker.” Hitting Critical
Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criti-
cism 4, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 27–48.
Garner, Dwight. “Adopted Voice,” New York Times, 5
September 1999, late edition, sec. 7, p. 6.
McGrath, Charles. “Deep in Suburbia,” New York
Times, 29 February 2004, late edition, sec. 6, p.
44.
Quan, Kenneth. “Chang-rae Lee: Voice for a New
Identity” April 23, 2004. Asia Pacific Arts. Avail-
able online. URL: http:///www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/
article.asp?parentid-10559.
Jaime ClelandLee, C. Y. (1917– )
Born in Hunan Province, China, Chin Yang Lee
moved to the United States in 1943, where he be-
came a writer. He is best known for his novel The
Flower Drum Song (1957), which was made into a
musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein that ran on
Broadway and was released as a film in 1961. The
musical was revived with a new script by DAVID
HENRY HWANG in 2001.
Lee began his writing career as a playwright at
Yale University, where he earned his M.F.A. A New
York agent cautioned him that he would not be able
to sell his plays, since no play by a Chinese Ameri-
can had ever been produced. But she liked his writ-
ing and suggested that he switch to fiction, where
he might find a market. As he worked at his fiction,
he supported himself as a journalist, writing a daily
column for Chinese World and eventually becoming
an assistant editor for the paper. In 1949 his story
“Forbidden Dollar” won first prize in a Writer’s Di-
gest short story contest, and thanks in part to this
award, Lee became a U.S. citizen in 1949.
Lee’s first and most famous novel, The Flower
Drum Song, depicts an immigrant family, theLee, C. Y. 161