![]() ![]() That year, we moved into a two-bedroom rental in the back of the same building, overlooking the parking garage, and in the evenings, I’d wait by the window for their safe return. ![]() Some people rushed down the stairs, and she dodged him by running away.Īs soon as they could afford it, Dad bought a car and started driving to work. He grabbed her in the stairwell, and she screamed. Once, a large man followed her on the train, getting off at her stop on Grand Avenue. When my younger sister was in kindergarten, Mom would leave the store to rush home by 3, leaving Dad to close up. I could not imagine a world without them. Day and night, I worried for their safety. In particular, I watched my parents because I was afraid of losing them. I learned to pay careful attention to others. I minded my own business and said nothing, hoping that if I tried to shrink myself, I wouldn’t be noticed. In class, I found it hard to concentrate. On occasion, my older sister had to step in if a bigger girl wanted to fight me. Several pretty girls took turns bullying me. ![]() I was quiet, nearsighted and confused by the newness of things. I’m the middle daughter, and because I was born in November, often the youngest in my class, although usually the tallest girl. They closed shop only on Sundays to observe the Sabbath. There they started out selling 14-karat gold chains, then later brass and nickel jewelry, plastic hair beads, ponytail holders and barrettes to street peddlers and mom-and-pop-shop owners.Įach morning, at 6 o’clock, Mom and Dad left our one-bedroom rental in a squat, red brick building on Van Kleeck Street in Elmhurst in Queens, and took the subway to the store. More of a vendor’s stall, it was a 200-square-foot corridor-shape space between 30th and 31st Streets on Broadway. In 1977, a year after my father, mother, two sisters and I arrived in New York from Seoul, my parents ran a tiny wholesale jewelry store in Manhattan’s Koreatown. This has been happening for as long as I can remember. Some feel so threatened that they have nearly imprisoned themselves out of fear and distress. They wear hats, try to look “less Asian,” take taxis whether or not they can afford them. They walk on city streets only while accompanied by friends and exercise during the day. They told me that they stay home instead of going out, and when they do go out, they take only the safest routes, carrying pepper spray or personal safety alarms. I heard from hundreds of women and men, young and old, who described their workarounds - the extra steps they have been taking to stay physically safe. Lee, a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, received the 2000 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the 2002 William Peden Prize from the Missouri Review, and the 2004 NarrativePrize.Earlier this month, I took an informal poll on social media to ask Asians and Asian Americans how they had altered their daily lives in response to the recent rise of assaults against us. #MIN JIN LEE FREE#Lee’s debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was a top-10 pick for NPR’s Fresh Air, the Times (London), and USA Today. Her writings about books, food, global affairs, and travel have appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, the Guardian, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, the Times, the Times Literary Supplement, Travel + Leisure, Vogue, and the Wall Street Journal, and she served for three seasons as a columnist for the Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s leading newspaper. Lee is currently researching and writing her third novel, which explores the role of education for Koreans around the world for her diaspora trilogy The Koreans, which includes Free Food for Millionaires (Grand Central Publishing, 2007) and Pachinko (Grand Central Publishing, 2017).Ī New York Times best seller, Pachinko was a finalist for the National Book Award and was named to more than 75 best books lists globally, including the top-10 lists of the BBC, the New York Public Library, the New York Times, and USA Today. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, she studied history at Yale College, then received a JD from Georgetown University Law Center. Min Jin Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Queens, New York. This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow. ![]()
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