American Han - by Lisa Lee (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A novel where "the American dream meets the American nightmare"

Jane and her brother Kevin Kim embody the model minority myth until both depart from the path: Jane drops out of law school without telling her parents, and her brother Kevin gives up his promising tennis career and cuts himself off from the family. Neither of them feels connected to their parents undergoing metamorphoses of their own in their new country, a country which purports to support them and yet in which they can find no place. As the family splits apart and loses touch with one another, and Kevin goes missing, no one recognizes it as the warning sign it is, until it erupts in a moment that indicts them all.

Both deeply serious and absurdly funny, AMERICAN HAN is a story about striving and assimilation, about how the past can stand as an obstacle to the way immigrants--and specifically Korean immigrants--relate to other Americans; but also how each of them plays a role in inflicting the wounds that Kevin now carries and in turn inflicts back on the world. A searing and probing portrait that challenges assumptions about the immigrant experience, Lisa Lee's debut introduces a powerful new voice on the literary landscape.

Review Quotes

"AMERICAN HAN is a pulsating signal from the liminal zone where the American dream meets the American nightmare. It's an SOS from the so-called good immigrants, dwelling in this zone where only their successes are visible but not their distresses. In this deeply perceptive novel, Lisa Lee excels at rolling up the sleeves of those immigrants and revealing the cuts and wounds, inflicted by others...and by themselves."--Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer

"Tone perfect. To say that this book is smart is an understatement. The whole performs as a fantastic sleight-of-hand. Lee makes us look one way while all sorts of stuff comes into focus around us. This is a novel about a singular and eccentric family but yields understanding about so much more. Large issues abound here. This is a beautiful, important novel that will leave a mark."--Percival Everett, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of James

About the Author

Lisa Lee is the recipient of the 2023 Marianne Russo Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction, and a Pushcart Prize. She has received other fellowships and awards from Kundiman, Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, Jentel Artist Residency, and the Korea Foundation. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, VIDA, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Lee holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles and grew up in Napa, California.