# Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee (李立揚, pinyin: Lǐ Lìyáng) (born August 19, 1957) is an American poet. He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His maternal great-grandfather was Yuan Shikai, China's first Republican President, who attempted to make himself emperor. Lee's father, who was a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, relocated his family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University. In 1959 the Lee family fled Indonesia to escape widespread anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964. Li-Young Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York Brockport.

## Development as a poet

Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he began to develop his love for writing poems. He had seen his father find his passion for ministry and as a result of his father reading to him and encouraging Lee to find his passion, Lee began to dive into the art of language. Lee's writing has also been influenced by classic Chinese poets, such as Li Bai and Du Fu. Many of Lee's poems are filled with themes of simplicity, strength, and silence. All are strongly influenced by his family history, childhood, and individuality. He writes with simplicity and passion which creates images that take the reader deeper and also requires his audience to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. These feelings of exile and boldness to rebel take shape as they provide common themes for poems.
In his poem “Hymns to Childhood”, the memories of days past, the lost innocence of a carefree childhood embroiled in a constant turmoil of fear and danger, has etched into the memory of the poet. Lee in his mind, in his eyes, questions the meaning and purpose of the living present or its certainty? As a child, having witnessed the two-extremity meant out on his father, from a revered privileged doctor to an overnight marked dissenter dragged and locked away, had shaken then a child Lee, from which he never fully recovered. Such experiences of his parents and even his father’s conversion to Christianity as a minister upon the soil of his new homeland America, Lee, could only find spiritual refuge in penning down the meaning of life or its roots in the various poetry as his memory reel before his eyes. His family life experiences, and his varied mindset of its journey are left formulated in deep thoughts in poems such as Self-Help for Refugees, Immigrant Blues and Station. None of these compositions record a sound of new life experiences embraced with an iota of joy or excitement of 'new beginnings', as the original root had already suddenly been pulled and uprooted for him.

## Lee's influence on Asian American poetry

Li-Young Lee has been an established Asian American poet who has been doing interviews for the past twenty years. Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (BOA Editions, 2006, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll), is the first edited and published collection of interviews with an Asian American poet. In this book, Earl G. Ingersoll has collected interviews with the poet consisting of "conversational" questions meant to bring out Lee's views on Asian American poetry, writing, and identity.

## Awards and honors

Lee has won numerous poetry awards:
* 1986: Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, from New York University, for Rose
* 1988: Whiting Award
* 1990: Lamont Poetry Selection for The City in Which I Love You
* 1995: Lannan Literary Award
* 1995: American Book Award, from the Before Columbus Foundation, for The Wingéd Seed: A Remembrance
* 2002: William Carlos Williams Award for Book of My Nights (American Poets Continuum) Judge: Carolyn Kizer
* 2003: Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, which does not accept applications and which includes a $25,000 stipend
* 2024: Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, for outstanding lifetime achievement, Poetry Foundation
* Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts
* Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
* Grant, Illinois Arts Council
* Grant, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
* Grant, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

## Other recognition

* 2011: Lee's poem ″A Story″ was featured in the AP English Literature and Composition 2011 Free-Response Questions.

## Selected bibliography
### Poetry

* 1986: Rose. Rochester: BOA Editions Limited, ISBN 0-918526-53-1
* 1990: The City In Which I Love You. Rochester: BOA Editions Limited, ISBN 0-918526-83-3
* 2001: Book of My Nights. Rochester: BOA Editions Limited, ISBN 1-929918-08-9
* 2008: Behind My Eyes. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., ISBN 0-393-33481-3
* 2018: The Undressing. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., ISBN 9780393065435
* 2024: The Invention of the Darling: Poems. W.W. Norton & Co., ISBN 9780393867190

### Memoir

* The Winged Seed: A Remembrance. (hardcover) New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ASIN: B000NGRB2G (paperback) St. Paul: Ruminator, 1999. ISBN 1-886913-28-5