By Karen Sakai
National bestselling author, Helie Lee, sits down with APA to reveal her family's unbelievable tale of determination, courage, and humility.
Interview with Helie Lee
February 4, 2004
Interviewed by Angie Kang
Transcription by Allan Axibal
Born in Seoul, South Korea in 1964, Helie Lee's family immigrated to the United States and settled in the San Fernando Valley. Upon high school graduation, she enrolled at UCSB, transferred to UCLA, and then graduated in 1986 with a degree in Political Science. While working on television shows like "In Living Color," "Saved By The Bell," and "The Martin Lawrence Show" in 1996, she published her first novel, Still Life with Rice, followed by the In The Absence of Sun (2000), which chronicled the memoirs of her family's life in Korea. As a bestselling author, Lee has been featured in magazines like People, Time and Life, as well as The Los Angeles Times, CNN, NPR and "Oprah." In her spare time, Helie speaks as a guest lecturer at college universities like Stanford, UCLA, and Princeton and is active in the Asian American community. She is also a member of PEN, an organization of writers defending freedom of expression and building a literary culture, and Visual Communications, a nonprofit organization that promotes Asian Pacific media arts for the American public. Currently, she resides in the Los Angeles Area and is working on film project and novel, Macho Like Me, which documents her six and half month experience living as a man.
APA: Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background.
Helie: My name is Helie Lee. I'm an author. I actually attended UCLA. I'm an alumni! I was born in Seoul, Korea. My family immigrated to the states when I was five years old and that was in 1969-70. We had landed in Los Angeles. At that time, there weren't that many Asians period. We ended up settling in the San Fernando Valley in which I grew up amongst a lot of Jewish American students and kids and this was what I actually identified with. Eventually, after graduating from high school, I attended UCLA and I studied political science. After studying political science, I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with this degree, so what I decided to do was to travel. I went back to my home country, and thus began the journey of my life and my career, and I think that's why I am here today.
APA: How did you get interested in being an author?
Helie: Well, being an immigrant in a household of immigrants, we didn't speak very good English. I always say we spoke this bastardize combination of bad Korean and bad English, which Korean Americans have coined as "Konglish." It's equivalent to Ebonics. When you speak this language in your household, it doesn't make for a good writer, so becoming a writer was never something I could even fantasize or dream about. It was my worst subject in school. I think that's why I picked political science because I knew I had to write a few papers but not too many, and I was no good at math. So always being fearful of the English language, I never, never, fantasized about being a writer.
It wasn't until I left college and started traveling and discovering my roots --where I came from, the history, the culture in my family, especially the women in my family, did I realize that I wanted to say something. I started writing at that point. I didn't think I wanted to be a writer. I didn't think I had the capacity to be a writer, but I knew I had a great story to tell whether it was just for myself and my family or whoever else wanted to read it, and I just started writing.
I think that's what life is all about. If you want to do something, you just do it. Even if people tell you that you shouldn't because "you don't have a degree, you've never been trained, you don't have any talent in it." I just want to say, "So what?" If you're the only one who really matters in your life and your career goals, and if it is something that you're passionate about, you should go after it. And the great thing about being from an immigrant family is that we're taught that education and determination is everything. In this country called America, if you try hard and you struggle and you work at it, you can actually obtain it without having money or coming from a gentry, lineage, or without even being a guy. Here in this country, you can do whatever you really want to do and I really believe that.
APA: Your first book was Still Life with Rice which received great reviews. What was your inspiration for that book?
Helie: When I wrote that, I never intended it to be a book. It was more for selfish reasons. I wanted to know where I came from and I especially wanted to know about the women in my family-- women I had misjudged, women that I thought were very simple and unsophisticated, especially my grandmother. So when I began to dig into my past, I was very, very amazed, impressed and humbled by her experiences. For the first time in my life, I wasn't comparing my grandmother to everybody else--all the Jewish American grandmothers that I grew up with and adored. She was something very extraordinary. It was through her story, her life, that I got a very good sense of my place in this world and I thought, "Wow, I'm very special."
But what I also discovered as I was writing my grandmother's story and as I traveled with the book around campuses, around organizations, and around a lot of young people, is that my story is no different from everybody else's. Within the pages of my grandmother's life, everybody will find a hint of themselves or a hint of their own grandparents or parents. I think that's why it's universal. I think that's why the reviews have been so good. I think that's why the reception of the book has been overwhelming.
APA: Still Life with Rice connotes an Asian feel to it but you've had so many non-Asian people enjoy your book. Why do you think that is? What are the other aspects of your book that even non-Asians are able to relate to?
Helie: When I first came out with Still Life With Rice, my fan base was high school, college, and young professionals, and they were mostly Asian Americans. But now, when I go to a book signing, they'll be thirty-year-olds and above and all Caucasian. I just went to a reading where everybody was Armenian. Then I went to another reading a month ago and everybody was eighty and above. They all relate to the story because who doesn't have a mother or a grandmother or somebody that they adore in their lives, who has been there and has been a mentor for them? And I can't tell you how many people have said to me, "Oh, my God, you just wrote about my grandmother. I'm so glad I don't have to write the story myself." And I say, "Please do write your story because here in America, it has such a young history and it is "his" story. We must remember the women. The only way to remember these women of our past and our ancestors is to write our story. By writing our story we dictate and influence what is considered history.
APA: Your next book, In the Absence of Sun, details the journey of your family and your efforts to rescue your uncle from North Korea. Could you please tell us a little bit about the struggles that you went through?
Helie: Well, I'd like to explain what the title actually means. In the Absence of Sun means a place of absolute darkness. I consider North Korea to be the darkest place on the face of this earth. It is the most closed off, tyrannical regime on this world. Also, sun could also mean my grandmother's son, who has been absent from her life for about forty-seven years. So it is the struggle to find the son and reunite him.
In 1997, when we rescued my uncle along with eight members of his family, nothing like that had been done before where an outside force or people had masterminded an escape of a family so large. There were a lot of things that went wrong with this rescue mission. There were a lot of scars, wounds, and family betrayal. It just reads like a thriller and I never thought we would actually get to the end. I never thought we would actually succeed. I thought at times that someone was going to die or get hurt along the way, but we were quite fortunate.
Through this process, I felt like it was Korea's history that I was seeing within my own family. The Korean War tragically divided my family in half and my parents and my grandmother have never stopped wishing and searching for her son and for the reunification of the country. That's why I think it's been so powerful and impactful for a lot of Koreans, Korean Americans, and Koreans all abroad. People always say to me, "Is this a true story? It's labeled a memoir, but it doesn't seem like it could be a true story." And I say, "Absolutely." If I didn't live it myself, I would not think it was true because it's so fantastic. It kind of reads like a 007 rescue mission from North Korea. It's something that most people have never even heard of.
I think my book is a testimony. My family's story is a testimony that there is a bright future for Korea with reunification. But, it is also a bright light being shined on Asia. For example, people seem to think that in Asia, on the Korean peninsula, the Cold War has ended. That is where the Cold War began, but it has not ended there. The demilitarized zone that divides South Korea and North Korea is still in existence and it just pisses me off that they call it the "demilitarized zone" because it is the most militarized zone in the world. It makes people in other parts of the world think, "Ah, the place is demilitarized. It seems safe over there." But it really isn't. You have to pay attention to what's going on in North Korea. People say, "When someone hurts in Iraq, we all are affected." If someone is starving in North Korea, we all are affected. If there is a dictator somewhere, everybody is affected because we are now part of a global community. We cannot escape the pains of other countries. We have to be aware and be also active.
APA: The last part in the title of your book says, "A woman's promise to reunite three lost generations of her family," which you have so effectively done. Is this a mission you have held just for your own family or do you hope to extend this for other people who might have been separated by the war?
Helie: When Still Life With Rice first came out, we had just made contact with my grandmother's son who she thought had died in the Korean War, which was forty-one years before. People ask us, "How did you make that happen?" And then when In the Absence of Sun came out and we reunited my grandmother with her son after forty-seven years, people wanted to know how we helped his family escape from North Korea. They wanted a kind of one-on-one blue print of how to do this. But I tell people it's almost impossible. My family was one out of millions. We literally won the jackpot, the lotto, for us to make this happen.
In retrospect, with what I know now, would I have done what we did back in 1997-- rescuing my uncle and his family? I'm not sure my answer would be yes. I'm so happy for my grandmother and that she got to see her son. It was her last dying wish. But then I thought, "Perhaps our effort, our intelligence, our money, our time, could have been better spent for the larger picture." We did save my uncle's family and our family benefited, but I think of so many other people who are still suffering like my grandmother had for all those years.
While we were doing this rescue mission, while we were hiding out in China, while we were hiding out with North Korean families and safe houses throughout China, we had heard that there were about 200,000, perhaps more, North Korean refugees hiding out in China in absolute fear. When they are captured by bounty hunters or Chinese police or North Korean soldiers, they are repatriated back to North Korea where they suffer severe punishment, even execution. So I thought, "Maybe we should've worked for that whole." But my family realized that we had received a very special gift that most families do not, so we've all become political activists. I'm on the U.S. Committee for Refugees of North Korea, or something like that [laughs]. I forgot their name…something important like that. But we're all working towards the process of hopefully seeing reunification and helping out North Korean refugees in China.
APA: Did you originally intend to use your writing as a venue to express your political thoughts and your activism?
Helie: I'm so not political. Though I studied political science at UCLA, I am so not political. I'm quite simple as a person, as a woman. But what is amazing about life (and I'm very spiritual), [is that] what you think you can handle is so small compared to what God or the universe knows you can handle. I was making this little comfortable life for myself, thinking that after college I was going to get married, work for a year or two, have my three children, and live in my nice little house in Brentwood. These are the things I wanted to do, and then retire. But I think there was more for me to do and that's why I didn't get married and that's why I don't have children.
Oprah had said something very profound that touched me because every now and then I start feeling sorry for myself and I go, "Ya know Helie, maybe you shoulda gone the natural route. Maybe you should've gotten married and had your children and just been comfortable." But then I think, "Maybe I shouldn't have done all those things because so many other people can do those things, and probably better than I can. Maybe my mission is something different. Maybe it is for Korea. Maybe it is for world peace. So, just go with the flow. If a door opens, be courageous enough to recognize it and walk through it instead of trying to slam it shut and open another door that won't open for you." So I have always lived my life like that. When a door opens and opportunity opens, I just walk through it.
APA: Speaking of opportunities, there's a documentary that you're working on, Macho Like Me, in which you will play the role of a boy or some kind of male figure, is that right?
Helie: I did this documentary called Macho Like Me right after I came back from China and right after I wrote In the Absence of the Sun. The reason this idea came to me was that being an Asian female and having been what I was -- I was in my mid-thirties, unmarried, and without any children, and every time I went to Asia to deal with our male guides who helped us execute this rescue mission, they would constantly disrespect me and disregard me and tell me to be quiet and behave like a good girl. I had to receive permission from the men every time I wanted to do something, even something as minimal as having a glass of wine at the end of the day. They would tell me to ask permission from my daddy or to get permission from a male figure. I thought, "This is absolutely ridiculous." I've been on my own since I was twenty. After graduating from college, I've paid my own bills, I've done everything I wanted to do. I'm very responsible. I'm an author for God's sake! Yet these men were telling me what to do as if I was a child! So when I came back I was so upset and I thought, "I am never going to marry an Asian man. Maybe I'll never get married." I was so distraught by the relationship and being bossed around like that. Then I thought deeper and said, "It really sucks being a daughter." Having been born a female, I don't receive a lot of benefits and privileges that the men in my family do, and not just in my family, but in all societies in general. It seems like the men have it so much better than women.
I thought that wasn't fair and I wanted to equal it out and see how the other half, the better half, lived. So I actually cut my hair, changed my clothes, and moved out of my home to a place where nobody knew me as Helie Lee or as a female. I lived as a man for about six and a half months and I thought China was really hard. Being a man was such an experience that I still have a hard time verbalizing, much less writing about it. But I am glad I did it. I would never want to do it again. I would never want to be a man. But what I did learn is that men have it so much harder than I ever gave them credit for. I am truly in awe and have tremendous respect for them. I think I needed to go through that experience.
In my life, what I wrote about followed the course that I was going, and after China, I was very bitter. I was just a bitch. I was not happy. But I needed to be a man so that I could become more feminine (if that makes sense), and to also appreciate men. I don't discriminate against men anymore. Fat, short, brown, black, orange-- they are just okay to me. They are great. They have their own journey and we have our own and I'm not in competition. I hope that they support me and vice versa and I think that's what life is all about: contrast and cooperation.
APA: You've been the keynote speaker for various universities and events all over the country. What was your most memorable experience?
Helie: Gosh, they're all so wonderful. When I go to a signing or a reading, I see the audience and I think, "It's hard enough for me to get out of the house and to go hear somebody else speak. But when people come to hear me speak about my family, it's not really my moment; it's my family's moment and I am here representing them and honoring them. The times that I remember the most was when my family (they are my biggest cheerleaders) would come with me to each event. Prior to my grandmother's passing, she would come with me and everybody would be so thrilled to meet "Halmoni," which is the Korean word for grandmother. Those are the times I remember. Now that she has past, nobody from my family comes to hear me speak anymore. Maybe they're just tired of hearing me talk [laughs]. But now I feel like I'm on the journey by myself. But before, for Still Life With Rice, my family always attended. It was quite special for me that they were there and that other people could actually see them and realize that these are real people and that "I too come from an amazing family, and that I too can write the story of my family and honor my grandmother and parents as Helie had."
APA: If you chose not to go into writing, what do you think you'd be doing right now?
Helie: Honestly, if I didn't become an author, I'd probably be married with my kids, going to the gym and learning how to knit, which I really would like to, I'm not putting that down. I really want to learn how to knit. I want to go to the YWCA with my mom and learn how to knit a poncho. I would love to do all those things. Perhaps I'll have it in my future because I really do believe women could have it all, but not at one time. They just have to be spread it out a little bit. You have to sacrifice certain things for other things, but that's all a part of life. I believe that if I don't get it in this lifetime, maybe I'll get it some other way.
APA: Future plans?
Helie: I have so many. People tell me, "Gosh Helie, you're gonna be forty this year, you should just settle down and stop dreaming so large." But I think my dreams are not so large that I can't obtain each one. This sounds a little cheesy, but I love what Oprah does. I was on her show and it is so nice being her. She comes in, everybody adores her, and she talks to the most interesting people. I would actually like to be on the other side and be the interviewee, read peoples' books and talk to them about it because that's what I do the best--talking. I also had seen what she had done with setting up schools in Africa for the girls. She said that all the different countries have tried their way, but now she feels like the way she is going to save Africa is by educating the young girls. When I heard that, it touched a cord within me so deep that I thought, "That's what I wanna do." I would like to help her with that process and set up schools for girls all over the world. I would like to set up a school in North Korea for little girls. I would love to set up a school in China, in parts of South Korea, or in the countryside where it's very hard to get an education. But that takes a lot of money so I'd better work really hard and get some more bestsellers.
APA: Anymore books in the works?
Helie: Macho Like Me is actually a documentary/memoir. I'm writing the book with it. I decided to shoot everything on mini DV because nobody thought I was going to do it. Even my greatest supporters thought, "Well, even if she does get the courage enough to live as a guy, she's not gonna pass." So I ended up shooting everything on DV and I'm actually going to do a live narrative. It's going to be somewhat of a one-woman show and I'm going to try my hand at that. But at this moment I'm writing the script for In the Absence of Sun. It had been optioned for a movie. We just got funding for it. The title is no longer going to be In the Absence of Sun; it's actually called "The Crossing."
We're so excited because the amount of scripts that get chosen for funding and get chosen to actually go into production are so minute. Again, I feel very blessed. I feel constantly blessed, like there is this angel looking after me that is guiding my career. So I don't really have to think about it, I just have to participate. That's what I'm doing.
APA: Well congratulations on everything and thank you very much.
Helie: Thank you.
Published: Friday, April 9, 2004
