AAJA Visibility Award: Min Jin Lee
Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She is also the recipient of the 2022 Manhae Grand Prize for Literature from South Korea, the 2022 Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the 2022 Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity and fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Min Jin is an inductee of the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College and serves as a trustee of PEN America and a director of the Authors Guild. She is at work on her third novel, American Hagwon and a nonfiction work, Name Recognition.
ABOUT THE WINNER: In her deeply researched novels, author Min Jin Lee chronicles the Korean diaspora throughout history. Her most recent novel, Pachinko, traces generations of a Korean family living through Japan’s occupation of Korea and waves of migration to Japan and the United States. The book was named a finalist for the National Book Award and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was adapted for a series on Apple TV+.
She has also been outspoken about anti-AAPI violence and bias. In 2022, she published a deeply personal essay in the New York Times, Asian Americans Have Always Lived With Fear, chronicling her upbringing in an immigrant family in New York City. Her work has resonated with many both inside and outside of the AAPI community.
In an interview with The New Yorker last year, she spoke about differences between first-generation immigrants, who were focused on survival, and the values of their children or grandchildren. “We’re interested in meaning, and that quest for meaning has just as many difficulties, if not more intangible difficulties, than just survival,” she said.
For her stunning work focusing on AAPI communities, AAJA’s governing board is honored to present her with the Visibility Award, which honors efforts to increase the visibility and meaningful representation of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in popular culture and mass media.