The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #4: Margaret Juhae Lee

"I knew I had the story of a lifetime in my grandfather’s story. It just took me awhile to understand how to write it."

Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.

Here’s the fourth installment, featuring Margaret Juhae Lee, author of the memoir Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History. -Sari Botton

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Portrait of Margaret Juhae Lee by Kevin Meynell

Margaret Juhae Lee is an Oakland-based writer and a former literary editor of The Nation magazine. She was the recipient of a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University, and a Korean Studies Fellowship from the Korea Foundation. A Tin House alum, she has been awarded residencies at the Mesa Refuge, the Anderson Center, and Mineral School. In 2020, she was named “Person of the Year” by the Sangcheol Cultural Welfare Foundation in Kongju, South Korea, for her work in honoring her grandfather, Patriot Lee Chul Ha. Her work has been published in The Nation, Newsday, Elle, ARTnews, The Advocate, The Progressive and The Rumpus.

How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I’m 57 years old. I’ve been writing most of my life.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History, published March 5th, 2024.

What number book is this for you?

One.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

Investigative memoir, literary memoir, hybrid memoir—these are all apt descriptions. Investigative, in that I am a journalist in search for information about my grandfather, Lee Chul Ha, who was a student revolutionary in colonial Korea. Literary, in that I tell the story in scenes with dialogue, so that the book reads like a novel. Hybrid, in that, the book combines journalism, archival research, oral histories, and my own story of woman healing old wounds and finding myself during the process.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book? (Up to one paragraph.)

Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History traces my path back to colonial Korea to excavate the truth about my grandfather, student revolutionary Lee Chul Ha’s disappearance—weaving together the stories of four generations of my family against the backdrop of Korea’s tumultuous modern history. The book reveals the power, pain and beauty of inherited secrets, and my quest to find someplace called home.

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

I was a reader first. I always had a huge stack of books by my bed. I still do. I began writing in earnest after a friend moved to Norway in elementary school. We became pen pals and exchanged letters until I went to high school. I continued writing letters and postcards to friends through college and beyond.

I never considered myself a true writer until I was an adult. My first career was in art museums—I worked as a curatorial assistant at SFMOMA. My favorite part of the job was writing explanatory labels for artwork. The rest—which was mostly catering to the whims of rich people—I didn’t care for, so I switched my career to journalism at the age of 30.

When I started this book in the late 1990s, I was a journalist working as the assistant literary editor at The Nation magazine. I knew I had the story of a lifetime in my grandfather’s story. It just took me awhile to understand how to write it.

Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History traces my path back to colonial Korea to excavate the truth about my grandfather, student revolutionary Lee Chul Ha’s disappearance—weaving together the stories of four generations of my family against the backdrop of Korea’s tumultuous modern history. The book reveals the power, pain and beauty of inherited secrets, and my quest to find someplace called home.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

The most difficult part was carrying the heaviness of my family history and figuring out a way to write about it without feeling like I was drowning. I began this book before most of us had heard of “intergenerational trauma.” Part of the reason it took so long to write is that I needed to put it down for periods of time to work through the heaviness.

Getting it published was another saga. I had an agent very early in the process, before I traveled to Korea to search for my grandfather’s records. The book began as a journalism book because that’s what I knew how to write. After I returned from Korea, I began working on the book proposal but in the middle of the process my agent left the business. I talked to another agent who suggested I write the book like a detective story. I tried that too, and I realized that I wanted to write it in a different way, to capture the complicated stories of three generations of my family and insert me as a character and not just the observer. Life intervened and I put the book down. I met my husband, got married, had kids. I picked it up again when my kids were in preschool and rewrote the entire thing in a series of generative writing workshops. Having kids made me realize why I was writing the book. The book was for them.

I started attending writing residencies and workshops. I met an interested agent at Tin House and sent her my manuscript. She gave some great feedback and asked that I send the revised manuscript to her. Life intervened again. While my kids were in elementary school, both my parents fell ill. I had to put the book down again.

After my parents died, I signed with another agent I met at the Writer’s Hotel conference during Covid. We worked on a book proposal for about a year and I revised my manuscript to be structured around the three oral history sessions I conducted with my grandmother. My book was bought by Carl Bromley at Melville House on the last day of the first-round submission period. Carl was a colleague of mine at The Nation in the late 1990s that I had lost contact with. In our call, he told me that he had always wondered what had happened to my book.

Order the book.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

Because it took so long for my book to be published, most of the family members I write about have passed away. When I first started, I did send off chapters to my father to read after I wrote them. I stopped after a couple of months because I realized that it was too soon in the writing process to share. My father was a mathematician, and in his mind, the book should be more of history book that should convey facts about my grandfather and Korean history. After he retired, he wrote an autobiography, titled Dreaming with One Eye Open, that he shared with friends and family members. I used his book as a fact-checking source for mine, since I knew he took great care in getting all of the facts right.

The most difficult part was carrying the heaviness of my family history and figuring out a way to write about it without feeling like I was drowning. I began this book before most of us had heard of “intergenerational trauma.” Part of the reason it took so long to write is that I needed to put it down for periods of time to work through the heaviness.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work?

Oh gosh, there are so many writers who inspired me during the journey of getting this book into the world. Tolstoy, Milan Kundera, William Trevor, Paula Fox, Vivian Gornick, Frank McCourt, Mary Karr, Natalie Kusz, Min Jin Lee, Alexander Chee, T Kira Madden, Carmen Maria Machado, Jenn Shapland, Thi Bui, Susan Choi, Jennifer Egan, Han Kang, Don Mee Choi—the list goes on and on.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

Embrace the process and don’t beat yourself up if it’s taking longer than you think it should. It will take as long as it needs to take. Also, don’t give up.

What do you love about writing?

I love the immersive nature of writing—of entering a different world and losing track of time and my immediate surroundings. The pure flow of words onto the page is absolute pleasure.

What frustrates you about writing?

My mother was an artist and often painted in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep. Her “studio” was in the bedroom next to mine. She told me that she needed to make time and space for her painting even if inspiration didn’t come. I think about her words when I feel like I’m too busy to write. Finding time and space is always a struggle as a caregiver, mother, chauffeur to sporty children, freelancer looking for gigs, dog mom, etc. When I stop writing, like now since I’m the throes of book promotion, it always takes me a couple of weeks or even months to get back into the groove again.

What about writing surprises you?

If I’m in a writing groove, I’m constantly surprised at what comes out. When writing this book, I had to let go of my Type-A tendencies and write without a detailed outline or a specific idea of what I needed to write, to let my mind go places it needed to go. The structure and scaffolding came later, toward the end of the process.

My mother was an artist and often painted in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep. Her “studio” was in the bedroom next to mine. She told me that she needed to make time and space for her painting even if inspiration didn’t come. I think about her words when I feel like I’m too busy to write. Finding time and space is always a struggle as a caregiver, mother, chauffeur to sporty children, freelancer looking for gigs, dog mom, etc.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I write best in community. I rewrote Starry Field in a series of generative writing workshops I attended after my kids went to school. I also prefer writing longhand in a journal. There’s something about the words flowing from my head down to my hand and onto the paper. The physicality of it that process is essential. I’m a natural editor so writing longhand and forcing myself not to cross out words really helps me get the words flowing.

During Covid and afterwards, I’ve taken part of Corporeal Writing’s virtual hours, which takes place over Zoom. Like the generative workshops, a group of writers gather and introduce ourselves and the moderator gives us a prompt to write from and we go off and write for an allotted amount of time and return to listen to each other read what we have written. You don’t have to read, but I find it helpful to gauge what others find strong. Because of all the book promotion activities, I haven’t written for awhile, but I’m eager to get back to it soon.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I really think singing in the car as loud as I can helps my writing process. It embarrasses my kids to no end, but it’s such a great release and I can feel in my body how words and music coalesce in rhythm. Sometimes, my daughter will even sing with me.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

There’s always something percolating.

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Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.