Min Jin Lee

And they started out selling 14 karat gold chains and then later brass and nickel jewelry.

And then they sold plastic hair beads and ponytail holders and barrettes and

Each morning at six o'clock, your parents left, took the subway to the store where they worked six days a week.

I read that in the time that they owned the shop, they were fairly regularly robbed.

And you were once robbed at gunpoint when you were working there.

As you were growing up, you were in constant fear that something was going to happen to them and that you would lose them.

How did you manage that constant fear?

Well, I don't think I've managed it very well because even now I feel really anxious about people that I care about.

And I think that even though there are moments in my childhood, and even now, I always identify with working people, always.

And when I think about the vulnerability of people who are working, especially if you have to open the store to everybody, I'm fully aware as a real New Yorker that

It can be a very dangerous place.

I would say probably 95% of the interactions that you're going to have in New York are really positive and interesting and mind-blowing kinds of interactions.

But then there is that, I would say, 5% where you can have something quite dangerous happen to you.

And I'm fully aware of it.

So even though I can be really focused on something, I'm always sort of aware of my surroundings and that someone can get hurt.

And

I've surprised myself where if I see somebody coming, I could immediately take my left arm and shoot it out to protect somebody because I know that these things happen.

Yeah.

I have been held up at gunpoint in front of my father.

I have seen my father be mugged right in front of my eyes.