Bibliography
Ho, Wendy. In Her Mother’s House: The Politics of
Mother-Daughter Writing. Walnut Creek, Calif.:
Altamira Press, 1999.
Huntley, E. D., ed. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Tan, Amy. Saving Fish from Drowning. New York:
Putnam’s, 2005.
———. “A Discussion with Amy Tan.” Available on-
line. URL: http://amytan.net/InterviewWithAmy-
Tan.aspx. Accessed 17 March 2006.
Susanna Hoeness-Krupsaw
Saying Goodbye Marie G. Lee (1994)
In this sequel to the author’s FINDING MY VOICE,
Ellen Sung is a new freshman at Harvard Uni-
versity. Following in her perfect sister’s footsteps,
Ellen enrolls as a pre-med student, but her heart is
still with writing. She easily slips into college life,
becoming close with her new roommate Leecia,
an African-American student, maturing through
her writing class, and dating Jae, a Korean Ameri-
can from Los Angeles. As she starts meeting more
Korean-American college students, she begins to
think critically about her own Korean-American
identity. Sensitized by her new peers of the ongo-
ing Korean-black conflict that exploded in the Los
Angeles riots of 1992, Ellen’s political conscious-
ness is raised when the African American Students
Alliance invites a rap artist whose lyrics advocate
violence against Korean-American small-business
owners. When the Korean American Students of
Harvard asks Ellen to help protest, she realizes she
has the power to sabotage the artist’s event. Ellen
and Leecia’s differences explode in the midst of the
protest and are televised to the entire nation. Ellen
tries to restore her relationship with Leecia, but the
damage is done; her participation in the protest
has destroyed their friendship.
Riding on the tension in the wake of the Los
Angeles riots, Lee educates readers about the con-
flicts between Korean small-business owners and
black customers through the sometimes stereotyp-
ical dialogue among Ellen, Tae, Leecia and other
students. Unfortunately, this novel suggests that
pursuing resolution of the Korean-black conflict
is hopeless. Leecia and Ellen are ultimately torn
apart along color lines, and their irreconcilability
is manifested in a physical line made of masking
tape bisecting their dormitory.
In this sequel, Lee continues to develop Ellen’s
sense of identity. Jae’s character serves as a foil to
show how Ellen moves along a continuum toward
a more politicized social conscience. Harvard,
home to Korean Americans from different parts
of the nation, is an appropriate setting for Ellen
to nurture her desire to learn more about her Ko-
rean roots and contemporary issues facing Korean
Americans. This story does not end in physical vi-
olence in the tradition of Lee’s other novels, yet the
finale is highly charged with anger, betrayal, and a
strong sense of social justice.
Sarah ParkSee, Lisa Lenine (1955– )
See was born in Paris, France, to Carolyn Laws
(best known as Carolyn See), a successful writer,
and Richard See, a fourth-generation Chinese-
American anthropologist. After her parents’ di-
vorce when she was four, she lived in Los Angeles
with her mother, who was then a struggling writer,
changing residence and schools many times be-
tween the second and fourth grades. Nonetheless,
her ties with her father’s side of the family did not
weaken, and See spent a long time with her relatives
in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, where she experienced
the dynamic nature of life in a Chinese family.
In the mid-1970s, while traveling through Eu-
rope, she realized that the unstructured life of
the writer was what she wanted. She returned to
Loyola Marymount College in 1976, where she ob-
tained a B.A. degree in modern Greek studies in- Her freelance writing started in 1979 with
an assignment from TV Guide; since then, she has
been a freelance contributor to several publications
such as the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and LA
Weekly. From 1983 to 1996, she worked as the West
Coast correspondent for Publishers Weekly, writing
articles about the West Coast literary and publish-
ing world. She wrote commentaries on book fairs
See, Lisa Lenine 263