Lee, Helie (1964– )
Helie Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. When
she was four years old, her family immigrated to
Montreal, Canada, and then on to California a year
later. She attended El Camino Real High School
after her family settled in the San Fernando Val-
ley of Southern California. Like most Asian im-
migrant parents, Lee’s parents regarded education
as the best path to a better life for their daughter.
After high school, she entered the University of
California, Los Angeles, and graduated with a B.A.
in political science in 1986. After years of strug-
gling to find her career path, Lee found her calling
in writing. Thus far, she has published two mem-
oirs about her family’s traumatic experiences in
war-torn Korea from the 1930s to 1997.
Lee often travels around the country on book
tours and gives lectures on college campuses about
her bicultural heritage and passion for human
rights issues for North Korean refugees, the latter
being the subject matter of her memoirs. In 2002
Senator Edward Kennedy invited her to testify at
the Senate Subcommittee hearing on immigration
based on her firsthand experience. Lee is passion-
ate about her role as a writer and artist because she
sees herself as a Korean cultural emissary to pro-
mote understanding of human rights issues in the
still closed world of communist North Korea.
Lee’s first book and national best seller, Still
Life with Rice (1996), chronicles her maternal
grandmother’s life in North Korea until she came
to America. In this work Lee introduces us to a tra-
ditional Korean family life, the ravages of war, and
the partition of Korea into north and south along
the 38th parallel. Lee’s first book also sheds light
on what it means for Asian Americans to become
writers and highlights the generational gap within
Asian-American immigrant families.
Lee’s second book, In the Absence of Sun (2002),
specifically deals with her family’s desperate efforts
to make contact with her maternal grandmother’s
lost son in North Korea. This gripping true account
of the rescue of her uncle from North Korea was
not only featured on CNN and ABC’s Nightline but
also reported by the Associated Press, the Los An-
geles Times, and a number of other media. In this
second memoir, Lee defines herself as a writer and
locates herself in the Asian-American community,
especially the Korean-American community.
The overall importance of Lee’s two memoirs
is that the author sees her writing as a way for her
to understand her Korean heritage, especially since
she emigrated during her early childhood. Lee also
details the difficulties and struggles for Korean-
American women because of cultural gaps and
generational conflicts. She especially highlights
her clashes with the elders who hold that a single
woman at her age should be more conventional
and be married to a man, preferably in the medi-
cal profession, instead of doing something so un-
certain as writing.
Hanh NguyenLee, Li-Young (1957– )
Born to exiled Chinese parents in Jakarta, Indo-
nesia, Li-Young Lee’s poetry treats themes of fa-
milial and romantic love, religious convictions,
and forced relocation. His family offers much fod-
der for his poetry, both in the deep and abiding
bonds they shared and in their colorful history.
Lee’s paternal grandfather had been a gangster
and entrepreneur in China. Lee’s mother, on the
other hand, came from a well-respected family;
she is the granddaughter of China’s first provi-
sional president, Yuan Shikai, who was elected in- The marriage was not well received in Com-
munist China, and they were concerned about
other political dangers, especially since Lee’s father
worked with a Nationalist general during the Chi-
nese civil war, but later switched sides to become a
personal physician to Mao Zedong. Lee’s parents,
therefore, led their family to exile in Indonesia.
Lee’s father, Lee Kuo Yuan, taught medicine and
philosophy at a Christian college called Gamaliel
University, which he helped found in Jakarta, In-
donesia. Even in exile, the Lee family was forced
to relocate again after Lee’s father, who was inter-
ested in Western culture and ideas, was incarcer-
ated in 1958 for 19 months by the then-dictator
of Indonesia, Sukarno, who espoused anti-Chinese
sentiments. The Lee family then traveled through-
out Indochina and Southeast Asia before settling
Lee, Li-Young 165