Min Jin Lee

I think being admirable and being competent is very different than being an artist.

It's almost like the difference between being pretty and being beautiful.

It's like a really different level of vulnerability and exposure.

I am creating this world in which there's meaning.

I am arguing deeply against a postmodern world.

Min Jin Lee is an author and journalist who was born in Korea, grew up in Queens, and now lives in Harlem.

She's published two novels.

The first, Free Food for Millionaires, is about the daughter of Korean immigrants from Queens trying to make it among Manhattan's rich and glamorous.

The second, Pachinko,

chronicles several generations of a poor Korean family living in 20th century Japan.

Pachinko was an international bestseller, a National Book Award finalist, and was named one of the best books of 2017 by the New York Times, the BBC, the New York Public Library, and more, and it has been translated into 35 languages.

Min Jin Lee is also the recipient of South Korea's Grand Prize for Literature, and she has fellowships in fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

She's a writer in residence at Amherst College, a trustee of PEN America, and she joins me today to talk about her extraordinary life and career.

Min Jin Lee, welcome to Design Matters.

Oh, hello, Debbie.

What an honor to be on Design Matters.

I feel like I've made it.

Oh, please.

That's so kind of you.

So I have a question for you.