I was expecting some sort of Disney spectacular, beautiful ball. When I got here and everybody just looked exactly like people from another city that I was born and lived in, I was kind of disappointed. In my imagination, I always think things are going to be infinitely better. You move from a nice middle class home in Korea where your mother was a piano teacher to what you refer to as an ugly one bedroom rental with dirty orange shag carpeting on Van Cleek Street in Elmhurst, Queens. What felt most wrong about it? I wasn't used to the dirt and the ugliness and the danger.
The author of the award-winning novels “Pachinko” and “Free Food for Millionaires,” Min Jin Lee, discusses her remarkable career and the long journey and intention behind her Korean diaspora novels.