Marie Myung-Ok Lee is an American author, novelist and essayist. She is a cofounder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop (AAWW). This organisation was formed in 1991 to support New York City writers of color.[1]
Under the name Marie G. Lee, Lee has also written several young adult novels: Finding My Voice (1992), If It Hadn't Been for Yoon Jun (1993), Saying Goodbye (1994), Necessary Roughness (1996), and F is for Fabuloso (1999).
Finding My Voice is generally considered to be the "first teen novel released by a major publisher with a contemporary Asian American protagonist by an Asian American author" and tells the story of high school senior Ellen Sung as she deals with racism as belonging to the only Korean American (or family of color for that matter) in town.[4] In late 2020 and early 2021, Finding My Voice was reissued by Soho Teen.[5][6] For the novel, Lee won a "Best Book for Reluctant Readers" award from the American Library Association in 1992.[7] In 1993, Finding My Voice also earned the Young People's Literature Award from the Friends of American Writers,[8] and was also placed on the 1994 Young Adults' Choices list by the International Reading Association.[9] In 1997, the novel was featured on the American Library Association list of "Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults."[10]
Lee's novel Saving Goodbye is a sequel to Finding My Voice, which follows the character of Ellen Jung as she graduates from high school and enters her freshman year at Harvard University.
Necessary Roughness is about a Korean-American boy named Chan Kim who moves from Los Angeles to the fictional city of Iron Town, Minnesota, and plays football in order to deal with the racism he faces from his peers and to escape problems he confronts with his parents and the rest of his family.
Other novels
Lee's novel, Somebody's Daughter (2005), is based on her year as a Fulbright Scholar to South Korea, taking oral histories of Korean birth mothers. She has been involved in the adoptee community for many years, but Lee herself is not adopted. One of her family members is adopted from Korea.[11][12] She is also one of fifty journalists who have been granted a visa to North Korea since the Korean War.[13]
Lee's most recent novel The Evening Hero (2021), from Simon & Schuster, is about the "future of medicine, immigration, and North Korea".[13]
^Moss, Gabrielle (2018). Paperback crush: the totally radical history of '80s and '90s teen fiction. Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books. pp. 29–30, 36. ISBN9781683690788. OCLC1022200901.
