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).

Li-Young Lee (李立揚, pinyin: Lǐ Lìyáng) (born August 19, 1957) is an American poet. He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia to Chinese parents.

1 Family history
2 Development as a poet
3 Career
4 Lee’s influence on Asian-American poetry
5 Awards and honors
6 Selected bibliography
7 External links

[edit] Family history

Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia to parents of different backgrounds. His parents’ marriage was frowned upon due to the different classes from which they descended. Lee’s mother was the daughter of the first president of the Republic of China and his father was from a middle-class family of gangsters. 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 jailed for 19 months and then escaped to Hong Kong where he became an evangelist. Shortly afterward, his family headed to America where Yuan attended seminary and became a Presbyterian pastor. The influence of Li-Young Lee’s parents developed his love for Biblical, non-conforming attitudes into his poetry.

[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, homoeroticism, and silence. All are strongly influenced by his family history, childhood, sexual preference, 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. These feelings of exile and boldness to rebel take shape as they provide common themes for many of his poems.

Lee often writes from personal experience and uses poetry to tell his story, yet it hits shared themes of mankind so others can familiarize with his writings.

[edit] Career

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

Lee's poems have also been published in three Pushcart Prize: Best of Small Presses

Lee and his wife, Donna, live in Chicago, Illinois.

A new book is forthcoming by W.W. Norton in the fall of 2007.

[edit] Lee’s influence on Asian-American poetry

Li-Young Lee has been an established Asian-American poet who has been doing interviews for the past twenty years. Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (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 asks "conversational" questions to bring out Lee’s views on Asian-American poetry, writing, and identity.

[edit] Awards and honors

Lee has won numerous poetry awards:[1]

2003: Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, which does not accept applications and which includes a $25,000 stipend
2002: William Carlos Williams Award for Book of My Nights (American Poets Continuum) Judge: Carolyn Kizer
1990: Lamont Poetry Selection for The City in Which I Love You
Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University, for Rose
American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for The Winged Seed: A Remembrance
1988: Whiting Writer's Award
Lannan Literary Award
Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts
Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Grant, Illinois Arts Council
Grant, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Grant, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

[edit] Selected bibliography

[edit] Poetry

Rose. Rochester: BOA Editions Limited, 1986. ISBN 0-918526-53-1
The City In Which I Love You. Rochester: BOA Editions Limited, 1990. ISBN 0-918526-83-3
Book of My Nights. Rochester: BOA Editions Limited, 2001. ISBN 1-929918-08-9

[edit] Memoir

The Wingéd Seed: A Remembrance. (hardcover) New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ASIN: B000NGRB2G (paperback) St. Paul: Ruminator, 1999. ISBN 1-886913-28-5

[edit] Interviews

[edit] External links

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