birth_place awards nationality ethnicity notableworks birth_date article_title name occupation
jakarta , indonesia american book award whiting award lannan literary award american chinese american '' the city in which i love you '' 19 august 1957 li-young lee
 li-young lee poet
li-young lee

li-young lee -lrb- 李立揚 , pinyin : lǐ lìyáng -rrb- -lrb- born august 19 , 1957 -rrb- 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 .
his father was exiled and spent 19 months in an indonesian prison camp in macau .
in 1959 the lee family fled the country to escape 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 and the university of arizona , and the state university of new york at brockport .
