apartment buildings. The couple became citizens in
1960, when she took the name Mary Paik Lee. Quiet
Odyssey continues into the author’s old age, unique
among Asian-American women’s autobiographies.
Lee’s family came to America at a time when
few had heard of Korea. People would often take
them to be “Japs,” an identification Lee found of-
fensive because of the Japanese occupation of
Korea. Except for the Japanese, Lee writes of iden-
tifying closely with other minorities in America,
particularly Mexicans, whom H. M. had worked
with when he first came to the West and contin-
ued to hire on his farm. Her response to one man’s
drunken insult exemplifies her attitude. The man
comes into the Lees’ fruit stand, slaps her on the
back, and says “Hi Mary!” a stereotypical name for
any Asian woman, used by those prejudiced against
Asians. Kuang Sun slaps him back and says “Hi
Charlie!” calling him by the generic name he prob-
ably used for Asian men. When he asks why she
calls him Charlie, she explains that not all Asians
have the same name, just as black men should not
be called “boy.” The man takes her point, and the
two become friendly. The incident shows a few
essential things about the author’s character: She
stands up for herself in the face of discrimination,
identifying with fellow minorities, but will not hold
a grudge when the situation is corrected. Lee’s abil-
ity to forgive relates to another important theme
of Quiet Odyssey, the author’s Christianity. When
describing white Americans, she focuses more on
their kindnesses than their unfairness, and writes
of her admiration for family members who never
complained in the face of adversity.
Bibliography
Chiu, Monica. “Constructing ‘Home’ in Mary Paik
Lee’s Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in
America.” In Women, America, and Movement:
Narratives of Relocation, edited by Susan L. Rob-
ertson, 121–136. Columbia: University of Mis-
souri Press, 1998.
Jameson, Elizabeth, and Susan Armitage. Writing the
Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women’s West.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Jaime ClelandLeong, Russell (1950– )
Born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown,
Leong obtained a B.A. from San Francisco State
University and went to Taiwan for graduate study
at National Taiwan University. After working with
the Kearny Street Workshop, a community-based
organization in San Francisco that helps nurture
and promote work by Asian-American writers,
poets, and filmmakers, Leong earned an M.F.A. in
film from the University of California, Los Ange-
les, where he has been teaching English and Asian
American Studies, and where he has been serving
as editor for Amerasia Journal as well as head of the
Asian American Studies Center Press.
Leong’s literary contributions are also marked
by cultural diversity and political activism. Leong
coedited a collection of essays that address dy-
namics of multiracial communities entitled Los
Angeles—Struggle toward Multiethnic Community:
Asian American, African American, and Latino Per-
spectives. His scholarly work also aims to challenge
commonly held stereotypes of Asian-American
sexuality. His book, Asian American Sexualities:
Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience,
aims to challenge commonly held stereotypes of
Asian-American sexuality, offering a multifaceted
and interdisciplinary study of sexuality and iden-
tity politics.
Leong, however, is primarily recognized for his
creative work, which has been characterized as
representing diasporic experiences. His characters
tend to be caught in cultural exile or displacement,
as individuals who either have trouble adapting to
a new home, or who have to negotiate their sense
of belonging in their native home. His collection of
poetry, The Country of Dreams and Dust, includes
a series of poems representing letters written be-
tween a Chinese-American man and his relatives
in China. The aerogrammes show the ebbs and
flows in the relationship. The family initially wel-
comes the speaker as a member of the family, and
the speaker has a romantic idea of recapturing his
ancestral past, to which the family serves as a link.
As the correspondence progresses, however, the
speaker struggles with defining his relationship
with his distant family, as they repeatedly request
his financial support and intrusively find him a168 Leong, Russell