What Min Jin Lee Wants Us to See
Kalar, most racialized than ever, is a term in Burmese used to describe brown people. “Why would you surround yourself with dirty Kalars?” my Grandfather criticized me when my closest friends left, creating a seam of otherness between our evening tea discussions.
At fourteen years old, I was acutely aware of the violent ethnic cleansing campaigns
... See moreMin Jin Lee (MJL): “History has failed us, but no matter” serves as my thesis statement. I believe history has failed almost everybody who is ordinary in the world, not just the Korean-Japanese, who are the subject of Pachinko. I am also arguing that the discipline of history has failed. It is not that historians aren’t doing their jobs but rather... See more
Christopher Petrella • The Guardian
From a young age, I learned to speak for my mother as authoritatively as I could. Not only did I want to dispel the derision I saw behind that woman’s eyes, I wanted to shame her with my sobering fluency for thinking what she was thinking. I have been partly drawn to writing, I realize, to judge those who have unfairly judged my family; to prove
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