I am serving as one of the columnists for “The Morning Forum” of The Chosun Ilbo Daily. The first of the six essays appeared today. It was translated by Sunny Park, senior writer of The Chosun Ilbo Daily.
The English version of the essay appears here:
A Good Question: How Could I Quit Being a Lawyer?
The Korean version of the essay appears here:
왜 변호사를 그만두셨어요?
You can also download the Korean version in pdf format:
[min081120.pdf]
I was recently interviewed by the writer Julie Wilson for the magazine Tokyo Families. An essay appears in the forthcoming anthology ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY (Riverhead, February 2009), edited by the brilliant Rebecca Walker. The anthology was recently praised in Publishers Weekly. ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY includes contributors Jenny Block, Antonio Caya, Dawn Friedman, Suzanne Kamata, Susan McKinney Ortega, Liza Monroy, ZZ Packer, and Dan Savage.
This essay appears in the anthology Why I’m a Democrat (PoliPoint Press) which was edited by Susan Mulcahy. The proceeds of this book benefit survivors of the Katrina Hurricane. Contributors include: Frank McCourt, Jonathan Franzen, Isaac Mizrahi, Tama Janowitz, Maira Kalmon, Tony Bennett and Melissa Etheridge. Incidentally, I am a huge fan of David Gutkowski of Largeheartedboy.com, because indeed, his heart is enormous.
Profiles about my work appeared in The Japan Times and J-Select this month. The article in The Japan Times (“Tackling the ‘Zainichi’ experience”, September 9, 2008) was written by Tim Hornyak, author of Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots, and the feature in J-Select (“The Reluctant Expatriate,” Sept/Oct 2008) was written by Suzanne Kamata, author of the novel Losing Kei. It’s been great to meet such wonderful writers in Japan.”
M.J.L.
I was fortunate enough to eat at the sublime Ryugin restaurant in Tokyo, and my essay of the delicious experience appears in the September issue of FOOD & WINE.
“Six days a week, my parents sold Mexican silver earrings to street peddlers for $1.50 at their cramped wholesale jewelry store in Manhattan. Every night, my mother rushed home to Queens to fix delicious Korean suppers from the meat and produce on sale at the Elmhurst Key Food supermarket. Then, in 1981, about five years after we immigrated, my father decided that knowing how to butter bread properly should be as much a part of his children’s education as algebra and spelling. He allowed me, a precocious 12-year-old, to select one fancy restaurant to study each year. On the appointed day, the Lee family would waltz into the likes of Lutèce or Le Cirque.”
For more, the link follows: Food & Wine Magazine
I wasn’t able to post this earlier. Here’s an excerpt:
Newsweek: But there was so much adultery in the book! Everyone was sleeping around and breaking up with each other. It’s sort of a dim view of love.
Min Jin Lee: Love is an absolutely tantalizing, beautiful thing. And yet, it is profoundly disappointing, too. I think adultery is a wonderful metaphor of betrayal. Sex is this intimate act between two people. In its highest form, we believe that it’s to be held sacred between two people who love each other. And that’s the reason why adultery always wounds us so much. But, if you take that as a metaphor, you can have adultery in friendship, you can have adultery in any intimate relationship.
Read “Forget the Comparisons, She’s Unique” at Newsweek
“Discussing the tenuous relationship between first generation immigrant parents and their hip young offspring, this debut novel is sympathetic without being saccharine and constitutes a fantastic portrait of intergenerational cultural friction” – TATLER (Ireland) 2008
(Review of FFFM for the UK paperback -Hutchinson-Random House)
This was sent to me today, and I found it so fun that I thought I’d share it.
Copies of the UK paperback are sold at the newsstand at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. Now, I’ve never been to Hong Kong, but I thought it was good that the book is resting in such fancy digs.
M.J.L.
A few days ago, I reviewed a terrific book by Josh Ozersky called The Hamburger (Yale University Press) for The Times (London).
Unexpected and fun news:
In May, Free Food For Millionaires was No. 8 on the Fiction Bestseller list in Malaysia.
I hope your summer is terrific.
M.J.L.
The U.S. paperback of FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES will be released on April 9th. It has a new cover designed by the talented art director Anne Twomey of Grand Central, and copies should be at bookstores near you presently. There’s a new essay in VOGUE this month (April 2008) titled “Weighing In” in its Up Front column. I’ll be in the States starting the 9th for the nationwide paperback tour. I hope you’ll swing by the events and say hello. I look forward to seeing you, and thank you for your kind support.
M.J.L.
I recently had the opportunity to write an essay about WONDER WOMAN for The TIMES (London) which was great fun, and it made the cover.
Free Food For Millionaires was a selection for the Wall Street Journal JUGGLE Book Club, and there is a Q&A with the reporter Sara Schaefer-Munoz. I thought Schaefer-Munoz’s four essays on the book were marvelous and thought-provoking.
Wonder Woman: Love and Murder by Jodi Picoult
Min Jin Lee on Leaders, Good Girls and the Discomforts of Wealth
The book has been included in the following year end lists. My profound thanks to all, and I wish you a happy new year.
“Top 10 Books of 2007” – USA TODAY
“Year’s Best Books” – NPR’s FRESH AIR
“Editor’s Fiction Favorites for 2007” – THE BLOOMSBURY REVIEW
“Best Recommended List” – CRITICAL MASS, THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS’ CIRCLE
“Favorite Fiction of 2007” – CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“Favorite Books of the Year” – CHICAGO SUN TIMES
“Auspicious Debut” – 2007 BOOK SENSE PICK HIGHLIGHTS
“Auspicious Debut” – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Notable Books of 2007” – SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“Best Novels of the Year” and “THE TIMES Christmas Choice” – THE TIMES (London)
“Favorite Novels of 2007” – LARGEHEARTEDBOY.COM
Wonderful Book Club News:
FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES is a selection of the Juggle Book Club of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
My family and I moved to Tokyo in late August, and three months have raced by. Boxes remain unpacked, but everyone is settling in. Already, we’ve had two sets of wonderful houseguests, and we prepare for dear friends to arrive at the end of the month to help celebrate our first Christmas in Japan. As for the writing life, there was a personal essay in VOGUE in November about millinery and my father. Essays are forthcoming in the 2008 anthologies, WALK THIS WAY (ed. Rebecca Walker) about the new American family and WHY I’M A DEMOCRAT (ed. Susan Mulcahy)—a benefit collection for Katrina victims.
Happy news: In the States, FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES was included in the year-end round up for best fiction of 2007 in THE BLOOMSBURY REVIEW and in the inaugural Best Recommended List of CRITICAL MASS, the website of THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS’ CIRCLE, and was a Favorite Books of 2007 in the CHICAGO TRIBUNE. It was a Notable Book of 2007 in the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. On NPR’s FRESH AIR, it was included in book critic Maureen Corrigan’s list of eight best novels of the year. It was an Auspicious Debut in the 2007 BOOK SENSE PICK HIGHLIGHTS and in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. In the UK, the book was selected by THE TIMES (London) as one of the ten best novels of the year and is a Christmas Choice.
The book in translation will be released in South Korea (Magellan) and Italy (Einaudi) presently. The paperback will be released in the United States in April 2008.
I hope this note finds you and your loved ones very well in the holiday season.
Reviewing Free Food for Millionaires for NPR, Maureen Corrigan says:
“I read a terrific debut novel this week. It’s always heartening to find a good new writer, but what’s especially delightful about Min Jin Lee and her new novel, called Free Food for Millionaires, is that she’s taken up the expansive form of the nineteenth century novel and its concerns about money, marriage, and duty, to create a kind of Korean-American riff on all those sagas, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, where the principled heroine sometimes behaves like a downright fool.”
Follow this link to the NPR Website to listen to the podcast.
Charlene Dy’s interview for Newsweek. Here’s an excerpt:
‘Free Food for Millionaires’ was about so much more than just wealth and class.
It’s about love.
But there was so much adultery in the book! Everyone was sleeping around and breaking up with each other. It’s sort of a dim view of love.
Love is an absolutely tantalizing, beautiful thing. And yet, it is profoundly disappointing, too. I think adultery is a wonderful metaphor of betrayal. Sex is this intimate act between two people. In its highest form, we believe that it’s to be held sacred between two people who love each other. And that’s the reason why adultery always wounds us so much. But, if you take that as a metaphor, you can have adultery in friendship, you can have adultery in any intimate relationship.
Read the entire interview at: Newsweek.com
Min Jin Lee is the author of Free Food for Millionaires, published by Warner Books May, 2007
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