in Hong Kong, where Lee’s father became a suc-
cessful evangelist. The family finally settled in the
United States in 1964. Once secure in the United
States, Lee’s father studied theology at a seminary
in Pittsburgh and became a Presbyterian minister
in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania.
Lee’s father read both classical Chinese poetry
and the Bible to him, especially the Book of Psalms,
which Lee loved. Though he was instructed by his
father from a young age in many subjects, Lee did
not speak until he was three years old, at which
point he began to speak in full sentences. When
he began formal education in the United States,
he again became silent, embarrassed by his lim-
ited ability to speak English. Lee attended the Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh, where he began to write his
own poetry under the tutelage of Gerald Stern. He
went on to study for an M.F.A. at the University
of Arizona and the State University of New York
at Brockport. He has taught at several universities
including Northwestern University and the Uni-
versity of Iowa. Lee traveled to China and Indone-
sia in 1990 for a research project that resulted in a
book of autobiographical prose, a memoir entitled
The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995), which
received an American Book Award from the Before
Columbus Foundation.
Lee has written three books of poetry: Rose
(1986), which won the 1987 Delmore Schwartz
Memorial Poetry Award, The CITY IN WHICH I LOVE
YOU (1991), and Book of My Nights (2001). Lee has
also won a Lannan Literary Award, a 1988 Whiting
Writer’s Award, and a number of grants. He lives
in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, Donna, and their
two sons.
Shaped by his family’s exiles and immigrant ex-
periences, Lee’s poetry explores the power of mem-
ory to reconstruct a patchwork past, the forces of
love and strength (especially as combined in the
figure of his father) and their various permuta-
tions, and the physical and metaphysical move-
ment that characterizes human lives throughout
all times and cultures. Lee not only draws upon his
own family’s experiences, but also uses the Bible
and classical Chinese poets such as Li Bai and Du
Fu as sources of inspiration. In his poem “Furi-
ous Versions” from his second book of poetry, The
City in Which I Love You, Lee places these poets in
Chicago and, condensing his ethnic, cultural, and
linguistic history, has them say “What did you ex-
pect? Where else should we be?” Critic Zhou Xiao-
jing notes that as a poet, “Lee must wrestle with
the limits of poetic form, and search for new pos-
sibilities of language, in order to tell his ‘human
tale’ ” (131). Lee’s “human tales” in his poetry move
beyond his personal and family experiences and
transcend race and place to be able to speak to
every human heart.Bibliography
Lee, Li-Young. The City in Which I Love You. New
York: BOA Editions; 1990.
Xiaojing, Zhou. “Inheritance and Invention in Li-
Young Lee’s Poetry.” MELUS 21 (Spring 1996):
113–132.
Vanessa RasmussenLee, Marie G. (1965– )
Marie Lee, a second-generation Korean American,
was born and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota. As a
pioneering author of young adult fiction featur-
ing Korean-American characters, Lee has written
seven novels that mostly deal with sensitive themes
such as racial tension, ethnic identity formation,
self-image, parental pressure, intergenerational
conflict, and teenage problems.
Much of Lee’s writing stems from her own is-
sues of having grown up as the only Asian Ameri-
can in her community. Her parents immigrated
to the United States in 1953, more than 10 years
before the first major wave of Korean immigration
to the United States. She spent much of her time
in the library, partly because she loved to read and
partly because she was trying to avoid the bullies
at school who called her names and tried to beat
her up. Lee’s family enjoyed an upper-middle-class
existence because her father was a doctor and her
mother was a social worker. They pressured her to
study and become a doctor as well, but Lee ulti-
mately turned to writing while attending Brown
University. As she grew up and realized there were
no books that reflected her experiences, she chose166 Lee, Marie G.