By Cici Chagnon and Madeline Arcaro
Symposium author Min Jin Lee wowed KO students during her talks on Jan. 7 and 8, 2021. Students in the senior Symposium class who had waited to speak with her all semester were excited to finally get the opportunity to hear her speak after five months of reading her writing in-depth.
Students found her writing relatable, in that she writes about ordinary people. “History has failed us, but no matter” starts off her first novel, “Pachinko.” She writes about people history fails: the people with little money, the people who don’t do something extraordinary.
Lee is incredibly relatable to young audiences and was beloved by both students and faculty during her talks. The KO News got a life-changing experience in the ability to interview this wonderful on-the-rise author.
One of the most notable aspects of Lee’s fiction is the journalistic approach she takes to the writing process. For her novel “Pachinko,” Lee interviewed Koreans living in Japan, and for “Free Food For Millionaires,” she even pretended to apply to Harvard for research purposes. Her reasoning for this is because of the importance she puts on checking her own biases. “I think that one of the things that a writer must do,” she said, “whether she’s a journalist, or whether she is a novelist, or whether she’s a playwright or a poet, is to be really aware of her own biases.”
From Seoul to New York to Tokyo, another way Lee said she’s exposed her own biases is through living in so many different places. Aside from realizing how much she doesn’t know, Lee said that she’s also found a new outlook on learning. Lee said she disagrees with the idea that it’s harder to learn as you get older; the real key to intelligence is recognizing patterns. “I actually think in some ways, it’s easier to learn because I’m going oh, I’ve seen that before,” she said.
Another unique aspect of Min Jin Lee’s process that the KO community is now well acquainted with is her morning routine of reading The Bible. “It’s like a really strange thing that I started doing because I read Willa Cather,” she said. While The Bible might not immediately strike readers as being as significant a piece of literature as novels read in English class, Lee wants people to know that it has more to offer to readers and writers alike than they may think.
“You know, it’s not apparent to people that I’m actually constantly thinking about it,” she said. On the day we interviewed her, Lee had been reading a chapter from Second Samuel. Lee talked about how that chapter alone has significance to faith, but also feminism and political science. “What I really care about is trying to understand what’s a timeless way to understand a story,” she said. “What do writers do in terms of seeding a narrative in order to propel that energy?”
Aside from The Bible, Min Jin Lee wants you to read 19th-century novels, because, in her words, they’re awesome. She also uplifted some 20th-century modern novels. “I actually just spent an enormous amount of time writing an introduction for ‘The Great Gatsby,’” she said. “Because I wanted so much for everybody to read it and not feel like I’m making you eat your spinach. Spinach is actually quite good.”
Why eat our spinach? Lee said she wants us to think about the bigger picture. “I want you to think about the social novel,” she said. “The social novel is when novelists are trying to tackle these really much bigger issues of politics of inequity of social justice, but it’s in the Trojan horse of a really cool, fun propulsive story.” Lee said that’s what she tries to accomplish in her own novels.
Students and teachers alike especially loved this year’s Symposium because of Min Jin Lee’s ability to connect and relate to teenagers so well. One of the things Lee mentioned is that she wishes her students at Amherst College and teenagers in general knew is that things will get better.
“And it’s not about somehow saving civilization,” she said, “But it’s about being a decent roommate. It’s about being a decent friend. It’s about being a decent child of a parent or guardian and a decent student, and I think you can have an impact.”
