POET

Li-Young Lee (1957 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Born to parents who had been exiled from China, Li-Young Lee fled with his family from China, to Indonesia, as well as through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, arriving in the United States in 1964. Brought up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he later attended university there. It was not long before Lee began to put pen to paper and write poetry. As a contributor in Poetry Criticism stated: "Lee's poetry, particularly those poems in his second collection [ The City in Which I Love You], has been lauded for its emotional depth and skilled use of language."

Publishers Weekly reviewer Peggy Kaganoff declared that The City in Which I Love You, a remembrance of his childhood and his father, "weaves a remarkable web of memory from the multifarious fibers of his experience." Kaganoff commented: Lee's "images are economical yet fluid, and his language is often startling for its brave honesty."

Concerning Lee's prose work, The Winged Seed, an autobiography of the tumultuous years of fleeing persecution with his family, a reviewer in Publishers Weekly called the book a "lyrical memoir" that "recalls scenes of his childhood and youth in a kaleidoscope of dreams and nightmares." The reviewer concluded: Lee's "portraits of the times are vividly illuminating."

Commenting of the scope of Lee's work, reviewer Zhou Xiaojing, writing in MELUS, stated, "both Lee's identity re-creation and his poetic innovation are overlooked by critics who attempt to explain his poetry by emphasizing his Chinese ethnicity." MELUS reviewer Mary Slowik noted that Lee writes "out of an oral tradition which is essentially dialogic in nature. Thus [his] poems are not dramatic monologues or first-person confessions. Nor are they documentaries or exposés. Rather, [his] poetry is based on the give-and-take of conversation. They embody intimate revelations made between family members through letter and prayer, through a family's story-telling and religious ritual. The poems revere these connections and are not intended to destroy them." Slowik concluded: "Li-Young Lee's poetry . . . attests to a faith in the continuity of language, particularly as it enacts a dialogue across generations."

CAREER

Writer, poet, autobiographer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

POETRY

• Rose, BOA Editions (Brockport, NY), 1986.
• The City in Which I Love You, BOA Editions (Brockport, NY), 1990.
• Book of My Nights, BOA Editions (Brockport, NY), 2001.

OTHER

• The Winged Seed, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1995.

FURTHER READINGS

BOOKS

• Asian American Literature, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.
• Contemporary Poets, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.
• Poetry Criticism, Volume 24, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.
• Writers Directory, 14th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

• Christian Century, October 21, 1998, Kathleen Norris, review of The City in Which I Love You, pp. 968-970.
• Explicator, spring, 1996, Tim Engles, "Lee's Persimmons," pp. 191-192.
• MELUS, spring, 1996, Zhou Xiaojing, "Inheritance and invention in Li-Young Lee's poetry," pp. 113-132; fall-winter, 2000, Mary Slowik, "Beyond Lot's Wife: The Immigration Poems of Marilyn Chin, Garrett Hongo, Li-Young Lee, and David Mura," p. 221.
• Nation, October 7, 1991, Jessica Greenbaum, review of The City in Which I Love You, pp. 416-418.
• Publishers Weekly, July 27, 1990, Peggy Kaganoff, review of The City in Which I Love You, p. 227; February 13, 1995, review of The Winged Seed, p. 71; July 9, 2001, review of Days of Our Nights, p. 63.