Li-Young Lee

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An image of Li-Young Lee from the press release for a public poetry reading at Abilene Christian University (2001).
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An image of Li-Young Lee from the press release for a public poetry reading at Abilene Christian University (2001).

Li-Young Lee (李立揚, pinyin: Lǐ Lìyáng) (born August 19, 1957) is a United States Asian American poet, born in Jakarta, Indonesia to Chinese parents.

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[edit] Family History

Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia to parents of opposing backgrounds. His parents experienced life-altering events due to political unrest and their refusal to be confined by social barriers. Lee’s mother was the daughter of the first president of the Republic of China and his father on the other hand was from a family of gangsters and middle-class. Lee’s father, Lee Kuo Yuan, served as a the personal doctor of Mao Zedong during the Chinese civil war and was then exiled to Indonesia. Due to Yuan’s westernized ideas and anti-Chinese movements in Indonesia, Yuan was placed in jail for 19 months and then escaped to Hong Kong where he became an evangelist. Soon after, his family headed to America where Yuan attended seminary and became a Presbyterian pastor. It is the influence of Li-Young Lee’s parents that developed his love for Biblical, non-conforming attitudes into his poetry. Lee writes with individuality and strength that was modeled in the integrity of his father.

[edit] Development as a Poet

Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he began to develop his love for writing. He had seen his father find his passion for ministry and as a result of his father reading to him and encouraging Lee to find his passion, Lee began to dive into the art of language. Lee’s writing has also been influenced by classic Chinese poets, Li Bo and Tu Fu. Many of Lee’s poems are filled with themes of simplicity, strength, and silence. All are strongly influenced by his family history, childhood, and individuality. He writes with simplicity and passion which creates images that take the reader deeper and also requires his audience to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. Many of his writings are based on deep convictions and personal experiences, creating a sense of vulnerability and realness as if stepping into his living room and observing these poems come to life. His parents’ marriage was frowned upon because of the different classes they came from. These feelings of exile and boldness to rebel take shape as they provide common themes for many of his poems.

[edit] Career

Lee has attended the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport. He has also taught at Northwestern University, the University of Iowa and the Asian American Writers Workshop in New York City.

“Li Young Lee is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry, his most recent being Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001). His earlier collections are Rose (BOA 1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University, The City in Which I Love You (1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and a memoir entitled The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster 1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. A new book is forthcoming by W.W. Norton in the fall of 2007. Lee’s honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 1988, he received the Writer’s Award from Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation" (<blueflowerarts.com>). Many of his writings explore the paradoxes of temporal verses eternal, simplicity verses intricacy, and sorrows verses joys. Lee writes from personal experience a lot of the time and uses poetry to tell his story, yet it hits shared themes of mankind so others can familiarize with his writings. Lee's poems have also been published in three Pushcart Prize: Best of Small Presses and "1900~2000 Gay Writers Coalition" anthologies.

His honors include a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer's Award, grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Lee currently resides with his wife, Donna, in Chicago, Illinois.

[edit] Lee’s Influence on Asian-American Poetry

Lee-young Lee has been an established Asian-American poet who has been doing interviews for the past twenty years and it is ability to connect with all kinds of people that makes him exceptionally good at interviewing. In Conversations with Li-Young Lee: Breaking the Alabaster Jar (BOA Editions, 2006, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll), is the first edited and published collection of interviews with an Asian-American poet. In this collection, stereotypes of Asian-American poetry associated with humble, quiet, and exotic foreign images. Earl G. Ingersoll facilitates these interviews with great detail and ingenuity as he asks questions that are more “conversational” and bring out Lee’s true views on Asian-American poetry, writing, and identity.

[edit] Selected Bibliography

[edit] External links

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