The author Min Jin Lee lives in a four-story town house in Harlem that she and her husband purchased in 2012. A creaking wooden staircase runs up its spine, leading to Lee’s research library, on the top floor, where she works. It is a compact, sunlit room, with a couch, a pair of desks, and a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Before my visit, on a recent Monday morning, she had made sure to tidy up the room, but had left out a stack of books—some research materials for her third novel, “American Hagwon.” (The Korean word hagwon refers to a type of private enrichment school that is ubiquitous in Korean communities around the world.) They were mostly academic works about education and its centrality in Korean communities; some titles included “Koreatowns,” “Education Fever,” and “The Asian American Achievement Paradox.”
Lee is a prodigious, inveterate researcher, who takes a journalistic approach to writing her novels. She is about halfway through a draft of “American Hagwon,” and so far has interviewed more than seventy-five college students of Korean descent. For her two previous novels, “Free Food for Millionaires,” from 2007, and “Pachinko,” a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award for fiction, she filled more than ten Bankers Boxes with interview notes and other background material.
Yet Lee’s writing does not feel overstuffed with facts. A defining quality of her novels is their propulsiveness. When I revisited them recently, I found myself immediately drawn in, much like the first time I read them, towed along by her intimately drawn characters and tightly cinched plotlines. Lee’s gift is her ability to write sweeping, magisterial books that take on ponderous political themes––the Korean diasporic experience, the invisibility of marginalized groups in history, the limits of assimilation––and to make their unhurried, quiet intrigues read like thrillers.
Lee describes herself as a late bloomer. She immigrated to the United States from Seoul, at the age of seven. Her family settled in Elmhurst, Queens, and her parents ran a wholesale jewelry store in Manhattan’s Koreatown, where they worked six days a week, until they retired. She attended the Bronx High School of Science, studied history at Yale, and then went to Georgetown Law. After working for two years as a corporate lawyer, she quit, in 1995, and decided to become a novelist.
In 2001, Lee started writing “Free Food for Millionaires,” about a brooding daughter of Korean immigrants struggling to make her way in the louche world of high finance in Manhattan. When it was finally published, six years later, it became a national best-seller. Lee labored for two decades on “Pachinko,” an epic saga that follows four generations of a Korean family through poverty, humiliation, and tragedy in Japan. In 2018, Apple announced that it would turn “Pachinko” into a television drama, and that Lee would serve as an executive producer. The eight-episode series will première on March 25th. But, for reasons that Lee declined to disclose to me, she is no longer involved in the production of the show. Among Lee’s latest projects is an introduction to Penguin Classics’ new edition of “The Great Gatsby”—a novel that, she writes, “called out to me, a girl who lived in the valley of ashes.”
Lee has a warm, motherly demeanor––she texted before my visit to warn me that it was icy outside––but also an unflinching bluntness. She has become increasingly vocal, during the pandemic and amid the rise in violence against people of Asian descent, as an advocate for Asian Americans. During our conversation, which lasted more than two hours and continued over e-mail, we talked about her experiences as an immigrant, her books, and her willingness to be “extra Asian” these days. Our conversation has been condensed and edited.
Your books are about the Korean diasporic experience. What do you remember about first arriving in the United States?
I think when I first came here I was really disappointed, because I thought in my mind that America would be like “Cinderella.” I thought that I would get off the airplane and somehow the airport would be like a seventeenth-century fairy tale. I thought that people would be wearing ball gowns. I thought there would be stagecoaches. That’s how stupid I was. And then I realized that it looks just like Seoul, except with non-Korean people. I remember thinking it was so ugly. I lived in such an ugly little hovel. This is a funny thing about not having money: people think that if you don’t have money that you’re O.K. with the ugliness, but I remember how ugly the apartment we were living in was. There was an orange shag rug, which was dirty. We had come from a perfectly decent middle-class house in Korea. My mother was a piano teacher; my father was a white-collar executive at a cosmetics company. I remember thinking, Oh, we came down in the world. Even as a little girl, I knew that there was something wrong.
I remember I had to share the bed with my younger sister. My older sister was on the top [bunk]. And there were mice and roaches. It was so scary for me to see all that stuff. I remember we were at a free-lunch program, and I knew there was something different when you got a free lunch versus other people. Things improved for us gradually. I think that my family is embarrassed when I talk about this, but I talk about it because my interviewees routinely talk about the shame of it, and I think if they know that I went through it, then they feel like, Oh, it’s not the worst thing in the world.
How did it get better?
My father ran a newspaper stand first. As a child, I thought that was quite glamorous, because of all this candy. He did it for a year. He really spruced that up. My mother must have gone through fourteen bottles of Windex cleaning it. And then after he got rid of that, he owned a tiny wholesale jewelry store—again, not in any way beautiful, or nice, or elegant. But they just saved and saved, and eventually they moved to New Jersey, in 1985. They bought a house and they moved to the promised land of Bergen County.
There’s a line in “Free Food for Millionaires” in which you write that the protagonist, Casey Han, feels that, although she went to Princeton, she was “not of Princeton.” Did you feel that way about your college experience?
Yes. My peers were so much better trained for Yale than I was. I went to Bronx Science, and I did really well for the rubric of Bronx Science, which is exams, short answers. And then I went to college and there are these kids who went to private schools, who wrote such beautiful papers, and they were so elegant in the way they spoke about things, and they’ve been everywhere. I felt like a rube. I wasn’t angry at them, because they’re perfectly nice kids. They just had more than I did in terms of this sort of sophistication and poise and ease. I remember thinking, O.K., well, I’m a tough kid from New York, and I’m fine. But I definitely felt outclassed.
You majored in history, but I read that you struggled a bit in writing classes.
I didn’t do that well in college. I took too many classes. I didn’t approach it like, Oh, you’re supposed to get a good G.P.A. to get into a good grad school. I thought I was supposed to get as much knowledge as humanly possible. Anyway, I took a lot of classes I shouldn’t have taken. But then—this is the weird part—the English department had these prizes, and I ended up winning the top prize for nonfiction and the top prize for fiction in my junior and my senior year, respectively. So, even if my grades weren’t that great, I ended up getting these prizes, which meant that whoever the readers were, in the English department, thought that I had something, and I remember thinking, Oh, I’m not a writer, but maybe I know how to say something.
What gave you the belief that you could be a writer?
In 1995, I thought, Being a lawyer is really too hard. I can’t keep doing this. I also had this liver disease. I’m actually really, really well now, because I had very serious intervening medication, which I was able to afford through health insurance. I was a chronic hepatitis-B carrier, and my doctor had told me in college that I would get liver cancer in my twenties or thirties. A part of me always felt like death was chasing me. I got married really young. I felt like I had to get all this done. I didn’t feel terrified of quitting being a lawyer, because I felt like, Well, if I’m dead, I’m going to write this book and then I’ll be fine. But, of course, that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen for fucking eleven years.
It was the fear of death that led you to writing?
I’m not going to live long, so I might as well do something that matters to me.
It wasn’t an easy path after you quit.
I don’t recommend it to anybody.
What were those years like?
Really depressing. I think it was humiliating because I’m so proud. I wanted to write––O.K., you’ll laugh at me––I wanted to write a great, great novel. I wanted to write something that people would read years and years later.
You took fiction-writing classes at places like the 92nd Street Y and Gotham Writers Workshop. There must have been so many dreamers in those classes. Why do you think you succeeded?
Well, I’ll give you a counterexample. I took a two-hundred-dollar class at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and my class was taught by a person named Jhumpa Lahiri, before she won the Pulitzer Prize, and in that class was Cathy Park Hong, Lisa Ko, and Ed Lin. So, is it possible to meet other people who are very, very serious about what you do? Yes, and it’s an extraordinary opportunity to meet other writers who care as much as you care.
That said, the other classes that I took—a lot of them were filled with retirees. A lot of them were filled with people who were processing things.
I know that you start your books with a thesis statement. In “Free Food for Millionaires,” the opening line is “Competence can be a curse.” What did you mean by that?
I think this happens to a lot of high-functioning people. We think that we can do everything, and in our process of doing everything we don’t do the thing that matters the most. We don’t do the things that take the greatest risk, because we are so competent. And often we’re overtaxed by our competence, and we don’t know that.
Were you trying to say anything about Asian Americans with that line?
Yes, I think so, because I think Asian Americans have a model-minority myth, in which we are perceived as highly competent. Obviously, because I’m Asian American, I know many incompetent Asian Americans. [Laughs.] I write about them, and I love them. I’m incompetent when it comes to many things. Like I don’t know how to drive, like I failed the bar. There’s so many things I can’t do well. I am commenting on the model-minority myth with that statement.
Were you trying to say something about assimilation in “Free Food for Millionaires”?
Absolutely, because I think the assimilation philosophy is that you assimilate in order to achieve a certain goal, and that goal is economic stability and security. I think that that goal makes sense, but I believe that goal is deeply unsatisfying to everybody eventually. If you think about the first generation, we have to survive. We have to get the basic things—you know, food, shelter, clothing, stability. That makes a lot of sense.
The real disconnect is between the first and second or third generation, especially if the second or third generation has done sufficiently well. We’re not interested in just survival anymore. We’re interested in meaning, and that quest for meaning has just as many difficulties, if not more intangible difficulties, than just survival.
So, very often the first generation and the second generation are at conflict because they’re going, like, Well, why aren’t you happy? You have everything. And they’re, like, No, no, no, I have nothing if I don’t have meaning and purpose. And that gap can seem like an ocean or a puddle of water, depending upon who you talk to.
And what I see with my students, even in 2022, is just how much even second-generation parents who have achieved economic stability are internalizing the messages of the first generation, and cannot communicate to the third generation or the fourth generation. So I have students who are feeling, like, Well, I would like to be a photographer, or grow organic mushrooms if I want. Like, these things have value and meaning, and yet their parents are going, “Are you crazy? You’re going to stop being a C.S. major for this?”
There was a line in “Free Food for Millionaires,” when Casey Han breaks up with her white boyfriend, Jay Currie, in which you write that Jay, in his “unyielding American optimism, refused to see that she came from a culture where good intentions and clear thought wouldn’t cover all wounds. It didn’t work that way with her parents, anyway. They were broken-hearted Koreans––that wasn’t Jay’s fault, but how was he supposed to understand their kind of anguish? Their sadness seemed ancient to her.” What were you trying to say there?
I think there are so many well-intentioned people who don’t have your experience. They don’t mean to hurt you, and they don’t mean to hurt you by their sunniness. I admire it so much, and I need it around me. However, there is a racial and a cultural component that we can’t forget, as well as a class component. If you grew up poor, undesired, in many ways despised and different, and unable to see another way out, and you meet another person, even though they’re trying to help you, even though their strategies for survival have worked for them, they don’t understand that it may not work for your community. And even though Casey can perform, and has an ability to be around that world, it doesn’t mean that she’s at ease with it.
There’s a really ugly opening scene in the book in which Casey’s father hits her in the face. Why did you write about that?
There’s so much domestic violence in our communities that we don’t talk about for fear of harming our families or our culture, and I don’t think it is going to get better unless we talk about it. Also, just because someone hits you, it doesn’t mean that the person is evil. That’s a very controversial thing that I’m saying, but I’m going to say it because we have all felt violence in our hearts. Some of us have acted on it, and some of us have not. So part of my job is to see it in narrative, and so I put it there. But the statistics of domestic violence for our communities of color are really quite shocking.
Physical discipline of children, in particular, is common.
It’s quite normal. I’ve actually interviewed many Koreans who’ve had to contact social services when they’re growing up because of it, or gone to shelters as a result.
The Korean American church is a big motif in “Free Food for Millionaires.” What was the role of the church in your upbringing?
I was born in the church, raised in the church. Church is part of my life, and I’ve gone to Korean churches and Western churches. I go to church every Sunday even now, and that’s really strange in my community as an artist. I was at a Christmas party, a very literary party. It was kind of one of those drop-in things, and they said, “Well, where are you going now?” And I said, “I’m going to go to church,” because I was going to some evening service. They couldn’t believe it. They started laughing, and they didn’t mean to laugh, but they thought it was so preposterous that I was going to church. I was, like, “It’s Christmas and I’m going to church.” But I felt really ashamed, like, What did I do to make people think that it was impossible for me to go to church? It must be because I don’t stop swearing. But my grandfather was a Presbyterian minister. He went to seminary in Pyongyang, as well as in Japan. He ended up becoming a headmaster of a school for repatriated Korean orphans from Japan, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was a pillar of his community. And then my mother and father, when we first came here, we went to the Newtown Presbyterian Church in Elmhurst, Queens. We went to a Western church.
Oh, that’s interesting.
Yes. We didn’t go to a Korean church. My parents really wanted us to learn how to speak English. Back then, in 1976, there were very few Koreans where we lived. Queens, when we think about it, it’s all these Koreans, but I grew up in Elmhurst, and then in Maspeth, before my parents went to New Jersey, and there were almost no Koreans. It was mostly white ethnic immigrants—Polish, Czech, Russian. Maybe a South Asian person here and there, but very few Koreans. A lot of Latinos, like Dominican, Puerto Rican, and there were also African Americans and Caribbean Americans.
Why do you think religion stayed with you? So many second-generation Korean Americans who grew up in the church have fallen away from the church, and it’s no longer part of their lives.
I’m deeply interested in God as the creator and God as an active force in the world, or inactive force. I understand if people feel Christianity is repugnant to them. I understand if people feel like the way certain Christians behave is horrible. There is that line from, I think, Chesterton: “What’s the best reason for not being a Christian? Christians.” And I get it because I’m horrified by some of the behaviors of Christians in the world.
You’ve talked about how you have a practice of reading a chapter from the Bible every day. Do you do that before you start writing?
I do.
What do you get out of that process?
When I first quit being a lawyer, in 1995, I was reading the F.T., the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal before I started writing. It didn’t turn out very well. I was, like, I need another ritual. I read that Willa Cather read a chapter of the Bible every day. I was really inspired, because I think her prose is so sturdy. I was, like, O.K., I’m going to read the Bible. I would read a chapter, and then I’d do my work. Gradually, I started to read the chapter and I realized that there were things I didn’t understand, and some of it was dreadfully boring. You have some people who just open the Bible and read whatever. I didn’t do that. I approached it the way I approach everything: I turn the page, like Robert Caro. I turn every single freaking page. So I bought a New International Version study Bible. They have commentaries below it. I’ll show you. [Takes out a well-thumbed, large-print Bible.] I will read let’s say—like, today was Psalm 113. So I’ll read the entire thing. And then I will read all of the commentaries twice, and then I’ll read it again. It’s really weird.
You’re making notes too . . .
Oh, my gosh, yes. I mean, it’s non-stop. And then I also keep a journal. It is like listening to God. It’s kind of like listening to a book. I’m overhearing the thoughts of God. There is this existential idea, which I appreciate, of listening to an author think, and, in this case, the author who inspired the men who wrote the Bible.
I also pray. I pray for inspiration and also to somehow stay in what I’m doing, because I find it so hard.
I read that you chose Casey Han’s name from someone you came across in the Times’ “Portraits of Grief” series.
This is right behind you, if you turn around. [Points to a newspaper clipping on a bookshelf.]
Oh, wow.
It’s Casey Cho, that’s her. I read that obituary. On 9/11, I lived downtown. We had to move. I was really depressed because all these people had died in my back yard. I couldn’t read the paper. I couldn’t function very well. I read the obituary, and I saw this Asian face, and then she had this Korean name and I thought, That’s incredible. She was adorable, and her background just sort of spoke to me, and I thought, Oh, I’m going to name my main character after her.
So it’s obviously not her—I don’t know who she is, I don’t know her family, I don’t know anything. But I love this idea of her name being Casey. And han, of course, is that word which, if I had to give a direct translation, is the inexpressible anguish of a person tied to this country, Korea, of all the oppression and dislocation.
The title of your book “Free Food for Millionaires” comes from a scene in which investment bankers receive free lunch after closing a deal.
I was making the ironic comment, “Why do we give millionaires free food? Why do the rich get all the goodies?” But the real thing that I was trying to argue was that we’re all really millionaires because we are given this grace, this unmerited favor of gifts and talents. So every character has a kind of extraordinary gift. Nobody’s actually poor if you really know what your gifts are, and that’s a life’s journey, right?
After “Free Food for Millionaires,” it took another decade before “Pachinko” was published. Part of the reason it took so long, as I understand it, is you have a really extensive research process. Can you tell me about that?
I read secondary material. I read academic material. I read scholarship. And then I also do numerous interviews of experts and the subjects. So, for example, there’s an undocumented story line in my next novel. I have been interviewing undocumented Koreans.
While researching “Free Food for Millionaires,” you took a class at Harvard Business School?
I interviewed all these people who went to H.B.S., and they said, “Have you been there?” And I said, “No, I haven’t. How do I go visit?” And they said, “It’s easy—pretend to apply.” I spent an entire day taking a class, listening to the welcoming session. And I took an entire semester of millinery [at the Fashion Institute of Technology] because Casey is a milliner.
How does all of this research translate to the page?
The answer is confidence. It’s the confidence I don’t have when I begin something. I have so much insecurity about the stuff that I don’t know, and by the time I finish my research I’m, like, Bring it.
It’s almost like you imbibe it so that you can then write it.
Yes. I imbibe it. I swim in it, and also I fall in love with it. I fall in love with my characters.
Your opening line in “Pachinko”—your thesis statement—is “History has failed us, but no matter.” What did you mean by that?
On a top level, I was arguing that the discipline of history, obviously, and history as a general rule has failed poor people and people who don’t have a voice. But, even more so, I was asserting that it doesn’t matter, that the people in charge are knuckleheads because regular people, ordinary people, have resisted and survived and done a lot of work-arounds.
It was specifically very important for me with the Koreans in Japan because I started out in the position of, “Oh, these are poor victims who’ve been oppressed by colonialism and how horrible.” And that’s all true, but they didn’t see it that way, and they told me, “You’re wrong.” And I was, like, “Well, O.K., how am I wrong?” When you hang out with them, you realize they’re quite––the word in Japanese––is they’re very genki. They’re very sturdy and strong. So I thought, Oh, well, where did that come from? And I realized it’s kind of like what Hemingway says about being broken, right? You’re stronger when you’re broken.
“Pachinko” follows four generations of a poor Korean family from a boarding house in Japanese-occupied Korea to Japan, where Koreans are discriminated against. Why did you focus on this passage of history in particular, one that most American readers know little about?
I mean, truly, can you think of any other subject that people could care less about? But I thought, It means so much to me.
I read that you first encountered the subject of ethnic Koreans in Japan during a lecture you happened to attend at Yale.
Yes. I was nineteen or twenty. Harry Adams, who was the master of Trumbull College, said, “Do you want to come to this tea? This missionary from Japan is coming.” And so this nice white guy, who helped poor Koreans in Japan, came and gave a talk. There were about two of us in the entire room, and I couldn’t leave. He told the story about, I guess, one of his parishioners, this little Korean boy who had been bullied by the Japanese kids that he went to school with, and he committed suicide. It changed my life, because I couldn’t stop thinking about this kid being bullied so hard that he had to jump off the building. It was so distressing to me. And, also, these are people of the same race; he was born in Japan. I had to do something about that.
Much of the tension over immigration in America is over racial difference. In Japan, hostilities exist within the same race. What is your understanding of the difference between anti-immigrant sentiments in the two countries?
They’re very similar. Very often, it comes from economic insecurity, anxiety, and the inability to compete, right? So, as globalization and economic forces [drive] changes around the world, you often have to find scapegoats. Throughout history, we see this. In Europe during the twentieth century, Jews were persecuted and scapegoated. I think in colonialism we have to figure out, how do you justify that these people can be treated this way? And very often it’s economics plus hatred. It’s both. It’s very often both. Nothing is only one or the other.
In “Pachinko,” there are also, obviously, parallels that can be drawn to the way America treats its immigrants. Were you consciously trying to expose these issues to readers?
I think, initially, I was very arch, and I wanted to teach these things. I was really angry. I was, like, “Pay attention to this. This is terrible. Notice this.” But then I realized there’s a lot of terrible things happening every day. How do I make people care? I realized I have to figure out another way. Learning how to write stories is really different from writing the facts. I’ve thought about this a lot. Every day is chaos, right? How do I create cosmos? How do I get you to change your mind? That’s going to require you to feel something.
You’re at work on your third novel, “American Hagwon,” and you have said that this is part of a trilogy and that the linkage between them is the diaspora experience of Koreans. What interests you about that?
I’m interested in the formation of modern Koreans. I’m trying to figure out, what does that modern Korean care about more than anything? In all of my travels, I’ve been asking people, and the thing that really comes up over and over again is education. So I was thinking, Well, that’s kind of a big topic, right? I’ve never met a Korean anywhere—like a Korean from Brazil or Canada—who doesn’t have very strong feelings about education, so I’m writing about that.
You wrote the introduction for the new edition of “The Great Gatsby” by Penguin Classics. What made you want to take this on?
“Gatsby” is this iconic book that is foisted upon pretty much every high-school or college young person as the primary American text. I felt that it was a real honor for me to be able to take it on. And then, in my intellectual vanity, I want to tell people how to read “Gatsby.” So I spent the energy justifying why I was right in saying those things. That’s why my ninety-one footnotes are there, because I needed backup. And I wanted the reader to know that this is a book about white people. It’s a great book about white people. But it’s not about all people. And it’s about one white man writing about specifically one white woman, and that love was a toxic love between two white people. Why do I say that? Because very often we are told that Americans are this. What they’re really meaning to say is white Americans are this. And me being able to say Korean Americans are that, or Puerto Rican Americans are that, is not in any way taking away from “Gatsby.” It’s just saying they’re different. So, I could really adore “The Great Gatsby,” and I do. I spent three months of my life talking about it. But I’m also going to say that it’s not everybody’s story at that time. Do I think we should read it? Yes. Do I think that it defines the American experience? I want to add a footnote. Using whatever little power that I have to say “hang on, there’s more” doesn’t mean that I’m kicking him off the shelf. I’m just saying, “Let’s reconsider the classic, with its flaws and its limitations.” And that’s why I spent that energy on it.
Do you think a book can be limited in its point of view, or in its depictions of race, but not necessarily be only about white people?
The book is about young white Americans who hail from outside of élite Northeast circles—Gatsby, from North Dakota; Nick, from Minnesota; Daisy, from Kentucky; Tom, from Illinois; and George and Myrtle, from Queens—and through Fitzgerald’s geographic choices he was able to discuss distinct geographic cultures of white Americans. Recognizing the specificity of Fitzgerald’s choices is a way to read and appraise his work fairly.
I don’t want to shy away from questions about how and why a so-called classic ages well or fails to do so. The only way to save good work through the passage of time and political climates and to keep reading is by pointing out what is observable with all the available knowledge and relevant context. It isn’t heresy or provincial to say a great book features whites, Blacks, Jews, or Chinese. The books can be about universal themes, and the biographies of the characters can be distinct. I am a Korean American writer who writes mostly about Koreans, and I hope to be read by anyone who cares for my work. Whiteness is neither my norm nor my center. It has a complex culture which I study, no different from how I study Koreans.
Your books have attracted Hollywood interest. “Pachinko” is about to première on Apple TV+. I’ve read that Netflix was interested in “Free Food for Millionaires.” What has it been like for you as an author to go to Hollywood?
I think Hollywood is different from publishing, and it’s a totally different visual medium. I think that it could be a really exciting place. And I am technically a professional screenwriter now. I’m a member of the Writers Guild now because I sold the pilot [for “Free Food for Millionaires”] to a real studio. It’s such different storytelling, but this is what I have learned about both Hollywood and publishing: it’s hard to create a good story. It’s really, really hard, and it’s actually really rare.
“Free Food for Millionaires” was in development with Netflix, but I know that doesn’t mean it’s going to get made. What is the status of the show?
It’s not going to be on Netflix. Netflix purchased the pilot, but it hasn’t been ordered to series. So it may go elsewhere, but I don’t know where right now.
And what was that like?
That was really wild because it’s one thing to write a novel—it’s another thing to adapt it into a screenplay. I was working with Alan Yang, who is just marvellous. He’s the co-creator of “Master of None,” and he made the film “Tigertail.” So having that experience with Alan was really terrific in terms of just thinking about a visual story and learning how to pitch to Hollywood. That was kind of insane because you are taking meetings with Hollywood studio heads and telling them about your book, but as a TV show. It’s really such a different thing. It’s almost like learning how to be an engineer or being a scientist or being a rock star.
This next question might be sensitive. The television adaptation for “Pachinko” is coming out soon. I had read earlier that you were an executive producer, but now, as far as I can tell, you’re no longer associated with the show. What happened?
I’m not an executive producer, and I’m not talking about that right now.
O.K. We’ll leave it there. So, what is Hollywood like?
Hollywood is like this beautiful fantasy. I mean, Fitzgerald ended up in Hollywood, and he died in Hollywood. He died, a drunk, in Hollywood.
Over the past few years, you have become one of the most visible spokespeople for Asian Americans, someone who’s looked to when we experience traumatic moments, like the spa shootings in Atlanta, or when Michelle Go was shoved in front of a subway train and killed, or, more recently, when Christina Yuna Lee was murdered in her apartment in Chinatown. Can you tell me about how you came to occupy this role?
Well, it’s weird. It’s a very strange thing because I would rather not say anything. I would rather not draw attention to myself, and, certainly, if you ask my sisters, of the three of us I’m the least equipped emotionally to handle that visibility. But, because I’m trained in history, I realized how important it is to be visible for Asian Americans in this country and how important it is for us to take certain positions that are unpopular and will make you seem like a troublemaker.
I’m terrified of being trolled. Oh, my God. I’m terrified of being criticized. I don’t like it. I don’t enjoy it. There are certain people who kind of want that. I don’t want that. So if I do issue a statement on an issue that I think is very important for me and people that may identify with me, then I’m incredibly careful about it. As a writer, I am attempting—perhaps vainly—to create portraits of people who have been rendered invisible. For me, it is worth trying because then, maybe, all the horrible and unfair stereotypes that Asians and Asian Americans endure each day can be chipped away.
What do you make of the concerns of the Asian American movement at this moment? In his new book, “The Loneliest Americans,” which you blurbed, Jay Caspian Kang writes that a lot of efforts around Asian American representation are consumerist, and part of a fight to have the “spoils of full whiteness.” What do you make of that critique?
I like Jay. I actually really like Jay’s book. And I like Jay’s book because, one, I read it—and I say that because I think those who haven’t read the book and criticize it are quite unfair. I thought that Jay’s book was very specifically about Jay. It’s a very personal book, and he has every right to believe those things. Do I think that Jay speaks entirely for me? No, of course not.
In the same way, if you read “Pachinko” and you don’t think it speaks for you, that makes perfect sense. Do I think that Jay has the right to espouse his view? Not only do I think that he has a right to espouse his view, I think he’s going to encourage people to have their own opinion and their own theory.
He believes that some of these fights around representation in the media are shallow.
I disagree, because I remember seeing a really great-looking East Asian guy as a model for a J. Crew catalogue years ago, and I remember thinking, This hot guy that Jenna Lyons or some art director has approved has advanced our cause.
Now, representation without good content is shallow. So, yes, it’s just an image that I saw in the J. Crew catalogue, and we can argue that this is a consumerist, materialistic foolish thing. If we only seek to be a good-looking guy on a J. Crew catalogue, that’s bad. But the idea that an Asian American man is considered attractive in that specific space, when you’re going against “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” this image of Mickey Rooney [in yellowface] being the Japanese photographer—again, I’m getting you a citation in media history. So I think it’s far more complicated, but those representations matter. It matters enormously.
One of the most sensitive issues right now among Asian Americans in New York City is how Bill de Blasio moved to eliminate the test for specialized high schools, like Bronx Science, where you went. This is a really complicated issue, one rooted in efforts to desegregate New York City schools but one in which many Asian Americans have felt overlooked and politically slighted. How do you disentangle this issue?
Well, there are a couple of things. One is that you’d have to change the state law to get rid of Bronx Science and Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech in terms of testing requirements. So part of it is a red-herring issue. We’re distracting parents. But we keep having this conversation because data is so compelling. The data is that you have this alleged overrepresentation of Asian Americans in these schools. I say “alleged” because I have a really serious problem with the term “overrepresented” being used for Asian Americans, because we are deeply underrepresented when it comes to getting access to state funding and government funding. Even though we make up fifteen per cent of New York City, we get apparently around two per cent of government funding. And then the other thing that really troubles me is that if you look at the actual income levels of the Asian Americans who attend Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and Stuyvesant, you will see that they are middle class and working class. These aren’t people who are out there just getting thousand-dollar-an-hour tutors. Some of the students I interviewed were using second-hand textbooks. They took these exams, and they’re there.
Now, that said, that performance—to be used as a wedge against or as a cudgel against Latino and Black students in New York City—is so deeply racially problematic. When I went to Bronx Science, from 1982 to 1986, there was a very fair representation of African Americans and Latinos. So we have to look at it as, What happened in politics since then to now? Some of this has been school choice, right? We’re talking about elementary school and middle schools and the feeder programs and getting rid of the gifted and talented [programs]. We’re just creating this problem and blaming Asian Americans for something that the Democrats have created—and I’m a Democrat. So that’s my little three minutes on specialized high schools. But, no, I don’t think that the tests have created this. No, the Party has created this, the people in charge.
There’s a conservative, almost nationalistic strain in some parts of the Asian American community right now. You can see some of it in the discussions about specialized high schools. Are you concerned about it? Do you understand where it’s coming from?
I do understand where it’s coming from. It’s coming from the fact that college admissions in this country have become a luxury item, almost like a designer handbag, or a pair of shoes. And we’re not focussing on how colleges are guilty of creating an impossible thing to get—this golden ring—and, rather, we’re focussing on how to get these kids to get in there.
I believe in holistic admissions. I love the idea of it. But I think in practice it’s being used in many ways to create a kind of racial balancing. I think that if you want to have the racial balancing, say you want to have it. I actually think it’s a good idea to have a kind of racial balancing. Do I think that colleges are being honest about it? No. So what’s happening? Parents are getting really anxious. So the parents keep trying to create children to be winning applicants. That is really dangerous. Why do I say this? Because I have met enough Asian American parents and children to know that their families have been destroyed by this focus on making the child a valuable commodity, when it’s a little person, with a little soul.
The Supreme Court is about to take up a case that could very well dismantle affirmative action. This actually might be “good” for Asian Americans in terms of admissions. Are you watching this case?
I hope to attend it. I attended the Harvard trial. I attended a good number of days. What affected me in that trial was how they’re not going after legacy admissions, or for athletes—just for discrimination against Asian Americans and how they’re graded according to the rubric. And I found that to be kind of stupid. So do I think that Harvard is trying to racially balance? I think so. Can I prove it? Well, the proof was there. Do I think affirmative action can be dismantled now? No. I think that, if it does get dismantled, it will be done for the wrong things. Do I think that it will have the outcome that Asian Americans want? I do not think that you’re going to see more Asian American kids getting to these colleges.
You said in a recent interview that you don’t mind being “extra Asian” in a moment like this one. What do you mean by that?
I was being glib by saying, “I’m extra Asian.” I thought, You know what, maybe if I said, as a fifty-three-year-old ajumma, “I’m O.K. with being Asian; no, I like it––no, I’m extra Asian,” maybe you can just say, “I’m Asian and it’s not good or bad—it just is.” This all goes back to assimilation again. Is assimilation the same thing as deracination, de-ethnicization? And I’m saying, “No, I’m going to lean in.”
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