We follow Joseph into slavery, and from there, into prison. Initially, his brothers decide to kill him-though they end up selling him into slavery instead-this terrible act of betrayal that changes his life completely. His brothers can’t stand him because they’re jealous of his status as the favorite son, and also because he’s a tattletale. For those who may not know, Joseph is the beloved child of Jacob. I was especially amazed by the story of Joseph, which has stuck with me now all these years and become such an important part of the way I think about my life and work. And as I read the Book of Genesis, I started to see why the Bible has been the ur-text for so many Western writers of classics: It’s such a rich text, one that could spawn thousands if not hundreds of thousands of novels, poems, and plays. Before each writing session, I started to read the Bible like a writer, thinking about language, character, and themes. Then I read somewhere that Willa Cather read a chapter of the Bible every day before she started work. Min Jin Lee: After I quit being a lawyer in ’95, I was having a lot of trouble writing. She lives in New York City and spoke to me by phone. Free Food for Millionaires, her first novel, was published in 2007. Lee spent years living in Tokyo, interviewing Korean immigrants as she researched and wrote the book. Pachinko was a National Book Award finalist this year, and has been named one of The New York Times’ 10 best books of 2017. Named for a Japanese pinball game that combines both skill and luck, Pachinko shows how momentous acts of kindness and cruelty shape lives through subsequent generations. As a series of unfortunate events leads Sunja, the only daughter of a widowed innkeeper, from Korea to a new life in Japan, the hard circumstances of each character-physical deformity, a case of tuberculosis, an unplanned pregnancy-become opportunities for transformation. Pachinko dramatizes this idea starting in a Korean fishing town, early in the 20th century, with a cast of characters rendered with startling humanity. ![]() He allowed his monitors to have lunch in the classroom, and I don’t know if he knew this, but he rescued me from the terror of a middle school lunchroom and from the reality that I did not know how to act around children my own age.What Writers Can Learn From Goodnight Moon Joe Fassler Richard Sosis, who taught law, and he selected me as a classroom monitor. At Junior High School 73 in Maspeth, New York, I had a wonderful teacher and his name was Mr. Then, later, my parents had a tiny wholesale jewelry store in Manhattan that sold costume jewelry to street peddlers and gift shops. Now, in the first year in America my father ran a newspaper stand in the lobby of a very dingy office building. I made my way through school and through shelves and shelves of borrowed books from the Elmhurst Public Library. I did my work, and I looked forward to be with my sisters, who protected me. The years that followed were not very different. I thought I would share that with you today. Recently, I was asked by the New York Times to write about “What is Power?” I thought about the thing that I wanted more than anything as a child, as a young person, throughout my life, and I thought I would write about not what is power but why I wanted this power. I wanted to give this talk because for those of you who don’t know, I’ve always had a serious issue talking. Min Jin Lee at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference The speech is based on the New York Times essay Lee wrote, “ Breaking My Own Silence.” Every month, Beyond the Page curates and distills the best talks from the past quarter century at the Writers’ Conference, giving you a front row seat on the kind of knowledge, inspiration, laughter, and meaning that Sun Valley is known for.īelow are edited recordings of writer Min Jin Lee speaking in 2019 about the struggle she found in finding her own voice, first as a profoundly shy Korean girl growing up in America and eventually as the exceptional novelist she became. Over the past 25 years, SVWC has become the gold standard of American literary festivals, bringing together contemporary writing’s brightest stars for their view of the world through a literary lens. ![]() Welcome to Beyond the Page: The Best of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference.
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