Min Jin Lee
Before becoming the acclaimed author of two bestselling books, Min Jin Lee was used to working outrageous hours as a lawyer in a New York firm. So it should be no surprise that as a full-time writer, Lee now throws herself into researching and promoting her books with that same relentless rigor.
When Lee spoke with WD, she was on the last leg of a 12-day tour that included conducting research for her next book at a punk-rock bar in Minneapolis, giving a speech about women in the workplace at the Wall Street Journal conference in San Francisco and accepting the fiction runner-up award for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Dayton, Ohio.
“I do have an agenda—to make you all Korean,” she said during her acceptance speech at the DLPP ceremony. “After all, perhaps it is the job of writers to ask, Could they be us?” It’s that sentiment that resonates so deeply throughout Lee’s work—the ability to provide readers a portal into her character’s experience.
In her 2007 debut, protagonist Casey Han is fresh out of college and trying to make hard choices about her career, love and friendship, but she’s also the daughter of Korean immigrants, trying to balance her parents’ traditional expectations with her very American lifestyle. The characters in , Lee’s 2017 National Book Award finalist, are simultaneously trying to feed their families, pay their bills and survive life as unwelcome Korean refugees living
