Min Jin Lee

Free Food for Millionaires is Junot Diaz’s Summer Reading Pick at The New Yorker

"Because I teach during the regular months, summer is where I can indulge in what I love most: a free-for-all reading spree. Already got my next four victims lined up. First, a novel I’ve read once before but I can’t resist a double serving of: Min Jin Lee’s “Free Food for Millionaires.” One of the great first novels of the past decade and a book that is simultaneously profound and un-put-down-able. From the moment Casey, our yearning kickass protagonist, finds her white boyfriend in bed with two other gals, this book just grabs on, and it don’t matter whether you’re on a ferry to somewhere awesome or stuck in a lousy job you hate, this book will thrill you to the bone. Lee writes her (and your) ass off. This is one everybody should read."

 

Read the rest of Junot Diaz's recommendations at The New Yorker.

Link » The New Yorker

News | June 19, 2011

The New Yorker Writes up the Talk I was part of with Erica Jong and Daphne Merkin

Samantha Henig begins her piece with: 

"What do women want? What’s the deal with Anthony Weiner? How do you know that a Jewish woman has had an orgasm? Those were the lunchtime topics of conversation at the Bryant Park Reading Room on Wednesday, in an event led by Erica Jong, Min Jin Lee, and Daphne Merkin, all of whom contributed to Jong’s new anthology, “Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex.” They discussed and read from their pieces (a reversal of that order might have been preferred), which deal with themes of, for Merkin, sex and ownership; for Lee, sex and stereotypes; and for Jong, not surprisingly, straight-up sex."

Read more at The New Yorker

News | May 12, 2011

Reading: Erica Jong and Contributors Daphne Merkin, Min Jin Lee and Susan Kinsolving

When: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 12:30 pm 
Where: Bryant Park Reading Room
42nd St and 5th Ave
(212) 768-4242

Hear from the author who brought you FEAR OF FLYING, whose latest compilation of essays by contributors like Gail Collins, Liz Smith, and Min Jin Lee, tackle the ever so elusive question: What do women really want?  In the free, unfettered spirit of THE BITCH IN THE HOUSE, SUGAR IN MY BOWL explores the bedroom lives of women with daring, wit, intelligence, and candor.

Essays | May 12, 2011

Up Front: After the Earthquake

March 11, 2011, fell on a Friday, the day I run errands and go to the market. Until 2:46 p.m., about an hour before my thirteen-year-old son, Sam, would return home from his international school in Chofu, a suburb of Tokyo, it had been a good day. Once in a rare while in the life of a writer struggling on her sophomore novel, it’s possible to achieve a state of semi-contentedness by producing a few decent pages, and that morning was a halcyon interlude in my otherwise grumbling condition. After printing out my day’s work, I tidied the house, raced to the bank, paid my utility bills, then mulled over what to make for dinner for Sam and my husband, Christopher.

read the rest at Vogue

Link » Vogue

News | November 03, 2010

TRAVEL and LEISURE November 2010

 An essay of Cheju Island of South Korea appears in this month's TRAVEL + LEISURE. I went there as college girl then returned recently as a grown up. It had aged beautifully. I hope to return soon. —MJL

News | October 27, 2010

NORTON HINT FICTION ANTHOLOGY

HINT FICTION: Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer (W.W. Norton 2010) is out. It was edited by Robert    Swartwood who coined the term "Hint fiction."—MJL

Contributors include Joyce Carol Oates, Ha Jin, Max Barry, Don Lee, Tess Gerritsen, Benjamin Percy, Rachel Lopez, Eric Hsu, Stephen Dunn, James Frey, L.R. Bonehill, Christoffer Molnar, Nick Arvin and me.

Reviewed by Ian Crouch in The New Yorker. 

News | October 27, 2010

“When We Fell In Love”

A brief essay appears in the column "When We Fell  In Love" in  THREE GUYS ONE BOOK.  Thanks to my editor, David Haritou.—MJL

News | October 01, 2010

Fall 2010 Narrative Magazine

The wonderful Narrative Magazine has published, in their fall 2010 issue, a video of me reading from Free Food for Millionaires. 

To view the video, click [here].

News | May 01, 2010

Being a Columnist—Chosun Ilbo

At the end of 2008, I was asked to contribute a monthly column to the Chosun Ilbo in their “Morning Forum” (“Ah-chim Nohn-dahn”). Founded in 1920, the Chosun Ilbo is the most influential newspaper of South Korea with a daily print circulation of 2.2 million readers and is the No. 1 source of Korean news on the internet. The Chosun Ilbo is publlished in Korean in print and on-line and in English only on-line. The rotating contributing columnists of the Morning Forum are scholars, politicians, economists and artists who weigh in on topics relating to Korea. Every six months, a new slate of 6 columnists are chosen by the Chosun Ilbo editorial board. Apparently, they wanted a Korean-American novelist to write about Korea on the topics of my choosing. My column would appear in the Korean Chosun Ilbo. Because my Korean language skills are poor, my columns would be written in English then translated into Korean by my editor Sunny Park.

Yes, I felt honored, but I was also anxious and doubtful, because I wasn’t sure if I could do it. I’d never been a columnist before. The high level of sophistication and difficulty of the Korean diction of the Chosun Ilbo made it impossible for me to read and study the column format without the help of a translator. And then, there were the politics. The Chosun Ilbo is viewed as an establishment paper and often considered conservative. I am not conservative. So, for the uninitiated, imagine the tone and quality of The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, the diction and scope of subject matter of The New York Times and the serious circulation of USA Today with some readers equating its political stance as more Fox News than The Daily Show. That said, no one in Korea dismisses the Chosun Ilbo, because of its history and imprimatur. Many of my favorite Korean writers had published first in the Chosun Ilbo. I expressed these anxieties to my editor. A brilliant and generous editor, Sunny did not blink.

So I wrote a column each month and submitted them. After I finished my first 6-month term, the editorial board asked me to stay on for another six months. After I finished my second term, they asked me to continue for a third term.

Recently, I had to put together a list of my columns, and I was surprised to see that I had written 15 already link.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve written about plastic surgery, how to choose a career, education, declining birth rate, rising suicide rate, mental therapy, and translating korean literature, among other things. Each month when I write my column, I worry myself sick for the obvious reasons: authority, accuracy, legitimacy, relevancy, and you bet, the on-line comment box where readers get to tell me what they really think of my theories about South Korea’s place in the world.

As I reach the middle of my third, and I think, my final term, I continue to tie myself in knots about what I should write, but I am also finally beginning to see how cool it is to study and write about my birthplace from the vantage point of having grown up and been educated in the United States. This is a privilege indeed, and I am grateful to have a say.

Essays | May 01, 2010

Chosun Ilbo

조선일보 아침논단
by Min Jin Lee

[2010. 04. 14] 번역된 한국 문학 그 놀라운 힘

[2010. 03. 04] 한국 브랜드엔 충성할 미국인 있나

[2010. 01. 25] ‘좀 더 잘 실패해보는’ 새해를

[2009. 12. 14] 승리하는 팀

[2009. 11. 19] 왜 한국인은 자살률이 높은가

[2009. 10. 20] “사는 게 행복한가요?”

[2009. 09. 16] 진짜 교육

[2009. 08. 12] 파리의 마레 지구에서 생긴 일

[2009. 07. 13] 아무도 말하지 않는 진짜 이유

[2009. 06. 11] 126년 묵은 사랑의 빚 88달러

[2009. 05. 13] 어버이날, 나는 어떤 부모인가 생각한다

[2009. 04. 06] 100번이나 불합격 통지를 받은 당신에게

[2009. 03. 22] 질투와 자부심

[2009. 02. 10] 차라리 대한민국을 성형하라

[2008. 11. 19] “왜 변호사를 그만두셨어요?”

News | March 19, 2010

Erica Wagner, Literary Editor Of The Times Of London—“Great Novel? You Must Be Having A Laugh”

“Answer this question: what kind of books do you like to read?”
FFFM made Erica Wagner’s Top Ten List of Comic Novels.

Great Novel? You Must Be Having A Laugh

Erica Wagner is the Literary Editor of The TIMES of London. She is author of a collection of short stories Gravity (Granta), Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath And The Story Of Birthday Letters (Faber & Faber; W.W. Norton) and the novel Seizure (Faber & Faber).

Video | January 31, 2010

Wall Street Journal—My Korean New Year:

download pdf

This essay and video appeared in the WSJ WEEKEND JOURNAL—ASIA on January 29, 2010.
Korean New Year will begin on February 14, 2010. Have a good one!

Link » Wall Street Journal

News | January 27, 2010

Forthcoming Publications 2010

The essay “Money as an American Character and the Legacy of Permission: Or How Mark Twain Taught Me That It Was Okay to Talk About Money” will appear in THE MARK TWAIN ANTHOLOGY: Great Writers on His Life and Works (The Library of America) edited by the Mark Twain scholar and Director of American Studies at Stanford University, Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin. The anthology includes essays by Jorge Luis Borges, Erica Jong, George Orwell, T.S. Eliott, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Robert Penn Warren, Kenzaburo Oe, Gore Vidal and Roy Blount, Jr. among others.

A 25 word work of fiction will appear in HINT FICTION (W.W. Norton & Co.) edited by Robert Swartwood. The term “hint fiction” was coined by Robert Swartwood.

News | July 13, 2009

Vogue Essays

I wrote these personal essays for Vogue a while back, but haven’t had a chance to post them till now. “Weighing In” was in the UP FRONT column and “Crowning Glory” was in VIEW. Both essays were edited by the brilliant Senior Editor, Abigail Walch.

July is really here. Unbelievable. I hope you are having a good summer.
M.J.L.

Click here to download Crowning_Glory.pdf
Click here to download Weighing_In.pdf

News | April 05, 2009

Wall Street Journal- Asia, April 3, 2009

When I was in Hong Kong for the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival, I was interviewed by the journalist Saul Sugarman who is also on the staff of the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Link » Wall Street Journal Asia