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It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

Chang-Rae Lee

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Chang-Rae Lee
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: July 29
Academic
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Seoul Teukbyeolsi
Difference
Differences
Whether
Believe
Make
Belong

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Most people dont think about race as much as I do. They dont have to.
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I think the action is ninety-three percent, and the consideration is peppered throughout but pretty short... Once I start it, I feel as though I don't want to look over my shoulder too much. I want to trust the preparations I've made.
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When I'm describing wartime activities or violence I don't want to be too ornate, to prettify the picture. Once we trace them to the present, the prose becomes denser.
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I really try to forget. I only look at my old works if there's an interview and someone asks me about it. Otherwise, it's not even in the rearview mirror.
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In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.
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You can be affected by a person because of something particular they said or did but sometimes how a person was, a manner of being, that gets most deeply absorbed, and prompts you to revisit certain parts of your life with an enhanced perspective, flowing forward right up to now.
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What hasty preparations we make for our future. Think of it: it seems almost tragic, the things we're sure we ought to bring along. We pack too heavy with what we hope we'll use, and too light of what we must. We thus go forth misladen, ill equipped for the dawn.
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Maybe someone's who's a different kind of writer [would think otherwise] - someone who'd be just as comfortable writing essays on what their novels are about. Sometimes you feel like certain novelists are like that.
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What if loving something means you should mostly feel frustrated and thwarted? And then a little ruined, too, by the pursuit? But you keep coming back for more?
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I had a visceral connection to the period [of Korean War]. By visceral I suppose I mean emotional. But every fiction requires so much that is not that so I did a lot of other research and a lot of thinking, a lot of struggling there.
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I'd always wanted to write something about the Korean War because of my heritage. My father lost his brother during the war, and I fictionalized that episode, which was told to me very briefly without much detail.
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All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material.
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Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.
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To be honest, Im not that much of a reader of Korean fiction, since so little is translated.
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Before I had published anything, I still hung out with people who liked to write. None of us had published, so there was no talk about the business, and there was probably a lot more angsty talk back then. But these days maybe there are some more laments about the culture, but I would say no.
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So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.
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For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.
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No place is perfect, but I admire Oahu for its offering of the tropical and the urban, and then its Asian-inflected culture and cuisines.
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I rarely talk about work with writers, and I love getting together with writers. I think writers are great to get together with, because we can talk about everything. I think that's why I enjoy it. Writers tend to be pretty open-minded, and pretty profane and loose. They have fun minds.
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One of the things my friends would tell you is that I hang out with a lot of non-writers - just regular people like bankers and teachers, and I actually try to steer our talk away from my work when I get together with them.
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