Author

Publication

1995-03-08 - Simon & Schuster, New York, New York (State)

Language

English

Word Count

51,250 words, Guess

Page Count

205 pages

Physical Format

Paperback

Identifiers

and 3 more
  • Library of Congress Control Number94037072
  • LibraryThing82180
  • Goodreads220064

Classifications

  • DDC811/.54
  • LCCPS3562.E35438 W56 1995
  • DDCB

Description

A personal account by the celebrated Chinese-American poet offers a magical work of memory and myth that recounts a childhood of exile, his father's imprisonment, his discovery of the significance of history, and his search for identity.

Description

This first book of prose by the celebrated Chinese-American poet Li-Young is a literary event - a luminous, wise, and magical work of memory and myth. Lee's extraordinary account follows the journey that began in the early 1950's when his parents fled China's political turmoil for Indonesia. After anti-Chinese sentiment there landed Lee's father (whose name translates to Perfect Country) in prison, the family escaped to Hong Kong, where his father rose to prominence as an evangelical preacher. When the author was six, they emigrated to America, where his father eventually became the minister of an all-white Presbyterian church in a small town in western Pennsylvania. The imposing, elusive, God-like figure of his father haunts Lee's narrative, which transcends the conventions of memoir to proceed by association. The words and images that memory reconstructs reconstruct the process of memory in turn, replicating, in shimmering layer upon layer, the intricate, inexact, awful mechanisms of the human mind as it explores a past resonant with terror, and love.

Subjects

Topics

BiographyAmerican AuthorsAmerican biographyLee, Li-Young, 1957-Asian american authorsChinese american authorsAsian american biography

People

Li-Young Lee (1957-)

Times

Other Editions

  • The Winged Seed: A RemembrancePaperbackSimon & Schuster1995-03-08

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