Marie Myung-Ok Lee

icon

Oops, now I have a new-new blog

Hi all, my stint at Adoption.com writing the FERTILITY blog was fun, but then I found out that they actively discriminate against gays and singles wanting to adopt...so I quit. But it was so fun now I'll be blogging for free on GreenFertility.blogspot.com. See you there!

Essay on Birth Mothers

I recently did an essay on my experiences with Korean birth mothers for the research for Somebody’s Daughter.

Minnesota Book Award Finalist

Somebody's Daughter was chosen as a finalist for the 18th annual Minnesota Book Award!

The other finalists are:

Beautiful Inez
By Bart Schneider, published by Shaye Areheart Books, a division of Crown Publishing.
Gardenias
By Faith Sullivan, published by Milkweed Editions.
The Painted Drum
By Louise Erdrich, published by HarperCollins.

For a full list of award categories: http://www.minnesotahumanities.org/Book/2006.htm

Winners will be announced at the ceremony on April 29th...just like at the Oscars, right?

New Stuff

Things are a wee bit busy on this end. I’ll be starting a new gig as the FERTILITY columnist for an Adoption.com blog… stay tuned.

In the meantime,

Here’s an op-ed I wrote for the Washington Post.
Here’s an interview on the As Simple As That adoption site.

Interview on TaiwanCalling

Here's the url for an interview done by Dan Bloom
http://somebodysdaughterinterview.blogspot.com/

Hi, Mobylives readers!

Can you find the author?

A. Louis contributed this wonderful pome:

By the shores of Gitchie Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Sat the walleye-gobbling lady,
Somebody's dark and native daughter.

Want to know what the heck we're talking about? Check out Mobylives.com or click here.

Selected as Summer Read

This novel isn't exactly a happy-ending kind of beach book, but it is a good size to make a pillow for your head in the sand. Was selected as a Summer Read by WGBH's Greater Boston.

Foreign rights deal!

Hey! We sold the TURKISH rights to Somebody's Daughter to Defne Yayinevi A.S. Way cool, eh? On a side note, just saw a great movie/documentary, Genghis Blues, by Roko and Adrian Belic, about a blind blues musician who learns to do Tuvan throat singing (ironically, he comes across this while cruising his shortwave radio in search of a KOREAN language program) and eventually goes to the motherland (Tuva) to compete in a throatsinging competition. Tuva is so isolated it seems that people probably hike to Ulan Bator for a taste of the swinging cosmopolis. Maybe my next rights deal will be the Tuvan rights.

Review in 'Adoptive Families'

How's this for a lead?

Once I began reading Somebody's Daughter, I could not put it down. How could the author, who is not herself an adoptee, capture the feelings of one so well?

Here's an Acrobat document of the review.

(the Mgmt.)

Grub Street Reading at Porter Square

Did a fun reading for Grub Street with fellow teacher/writer Mark Rader (read great story about depressed Wisconsin ginseng farmer), hosted by the inestimable Christopher Castellani. at Porter Square Books--nice store, great crowd, although a very loud, tons-of-questions customer...

]]> ... made me feel a bit like I was having an out-of-body experience (or, an odd duet) while I was reading. Snarfed a beer, discussed like issues with fellow Grub Streeters, looked at watch and noticed time had flown a bit too swiftly, ran across lanes of traffic to T, mentally urged subway to go faster, physically moved people so I could run to the bus station, and saw on the monitor the bus had departed, but ran over there anyway (see earlier travelblog--I am sick of driving!)...not always less stressful to take Mass Transit. Also, it turned out the bus driver had not yet left because he was unsure of how to get to the Mass Pike. At first his pleas for help went unanswered--you must be joking, right? Finally, a nice young man stepped up to the plate. We did have a few harrowing "oops, we do NOT want to be in this exit-only lane" moments, accompanied by much honking from surrounding cars, and a few second thoughts about whether I'd been "lucky" to catch the bus after all. It wasn't quite "Speed," but quite interesting nonetheless.

#3 on the Minneapolis-Star Tribune Bestseller list!

Okay, not to far to go to knock off the Da Vinci Code, right? Thanks, all!
--------
Local bestsellers
Published June 19, 2005
1. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. (Doubleday, $24.95.) A murder leads to clues in the works of Leonardo da Vinci.

2. Broken Prey, by John Sandford. (Putnam, $26.95.) Lucas Davenport's family travels to London.

3. Somebody's Daughter, by Marie Lee (Beacon, $34.95.) A Korean-born girl searches for her identity.

4. Fourth of July, by James Patterson. (Little, Brown, $27.95) Lt. Lindsay Boxer battles police brutality charges.

5. Haunted, by Chuck Palahniuk. (Doubleday, $32.95.) A group of writers retreats at an abandoned theater.

Attacked on-line - yikes!

My goodness. I am really new to this bloggy thing, introduced by my old buddy from college days, Christian Crumlish of Mediajunkie (and Radio Free Blogistan) who so generously set up and is hosting this site (thanks xian!!!). So anyway, my publicist told me there's a very "cute" and "heartfelt" discussion going on about how some Korean adoptees really like SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER. SO I do a Google search and come up with this: Asian American Empowerment: ModelMinority.com - A Korean-American Journey. Yowch!!!! Being flamed solely because this article from the local paper mentions I am married to some WHITE GUY (honkey, caucasian, gringo, take your pick). That someone makes me a sell-out and also gives some of the participants of this "Asian American empowerment site" to write also sorts of vulgar and gross things about me.

]]> The article, I think, was posted sincerely as news, but the replies from readers has quickly degenerated into a flame fest with me at the center. Please note that a few brave WOMEN (kudos to you!!!) called these anonymous posters on their illogic (i.e., how can they possibly deduce anything about me, or my work from this fact???) Of course, these women were promptly attacked, too, which makes me think that all the vitriol is coming from some other deep-seated place in these posters, and this article is just a useful "excuse" to vent their rage. It was also weird, the posting of the URL to my Brown website, somehow insinuating that by looking at my pic, they can further see what a sellout b**** I am. NICE!

Anyway, it always makes me sad when these interethnic/intertribal snarkfests happen. As if our communities don't have enough problems--here's all these smart, motivated people directing all energy into tearing down fellow minority people they don't even know, criticizing work they have not read...and then probably they'll probably go crying about how there's no Asian American representation in the media. That's why we started the AAWW, so we could have more voices out there, not fewer. In this age of irony, I'm sorry, but I have to ask sincerely, where is the love, guys?

Book party in NYC!

With a bunch of other amazing writers like Curtis Chin, Christina Chiu, Bino Realuyo, and Barbara Tran, I was one of the founder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop in 1991. I started writing Somebody's Daughter in 1993, so the book's almost as old as the Workshop. Fittingly, that's where I came back for my book party. We're in an excellent new loft space in Korea town, and the whole thing is quite professionally run by the erstwhile Quang Bao. He encouraged me to have a nice glass of wine before my reading, which I shan't do again, as it made me a bit tongue-tied.

The next day was NY Seoul, which is run by Max Han, who was also quote in the NY Times article on good Bulgogi places in NYC. The event was held at the Korean Cultural Services (an awesome space) and cosponsored by Also Known As, a Korean adoptee group. Another really great audience, a mixed group, and the AKA folks invited me out for drinks afterward--a really fun, intelligent group, really glad they are behind me and this work. Great jalapeno poppers, by the way!!!!