A Study Guide for Marie G. Lee's "Finding My Voice"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Marie G. Lee's "Finding My Voice," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535823333

Book preview

1

Finding My Voice

Marie G. Lee

1992

Introduction

Finding My Voice (1992) is a familiar American coming-of-age story from an unfamiliar perspective. In her debut novel, author Marie G. Lee, the American child of Korean immigrants, explores questions of belonging, pressure (from both parents and peers), and racism for a girl like herself in modern small-town America. Through her protagonist, Ellen Sung, Lee examines what it feels like to be an outsider and how the assimilation process started by immigrant parents is completed by their children. In this novel, Ellen must navigate the expectations of friends and family while trying to figure out who she is.

Finding My Voice reflects Lee's own experiences as a high school student and a member of the only Korean family, indeed the only family of color, in the small Minnesota town in which she was born and raised. The author admits to including autobiographical elements to the story but says the primary character, Ellen Sung, is fictional. In an autobiographical sketch published in the Eighth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators, Lee