| Helie Lee | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 이혜리[1] |
| Revised Romanization | Yi Hyeri |
| McCune–Reischauer | Yi Hyeri |
Helie Lee (born August 29, 1964) is a Korean American writer and university lecturer [2] who has also made a documentary film.
Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. Her family moved to Montreal, Canada when she was four years old. A year later, they emigrated to the United States, settling in California. Lee graduated from UCLA in 1986 with a college degree in Political Science.
Lee became active in raising awareness of human rights issues for North Korean defectors. In 2002, she testified before the Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Immigration to urge increased American support for North Korean refugees.[3]
In her first book, Still Life With Rice (1996), Lee chronicled her grandmother's 1950 escape from northern to southern Korea during the Korean War which separated her grandmother's family.[4] In her second book, In the Absence of Sun (1998), Lee recounts her family's experiences in helping her uncle escape from North Korea.[5]
In 2010, she released a documentary called Macho Like Me, in which she "doffs all signifiers of femininity to live as a man". A review in the LA Weekly panned the "cutsey one–woman-show framing device" but stated that the experiences that "upend [Lee's] preconceptions, mak[e] for engrossing viewing."[6]