[Book Review] Marie Myung-Ok Lee's Finding My Voice: A Novel (1992, 2021)
C. CLARK TRIPLETT
Lee, Marie Myung-Ok. Finding My Voice: A Novel. 1992. Soho Press, 2021. ISBN 978-1-64129-290-0. 192 pages, $10.99.
Cover image: Finding My Voice by Marie Myung-Ok Lee. Image reproduced for purposes of review and commentary.
Finding My Voice is the debut novel of Korean American writer Marie Myung-Ok Lee (originally published under the name Marie G. Lee). Originally published in 1992, it is recognized as one of the first novels by a major American publisher written by a Korean American author featuring a Korean American teenage protagonist. While the novel is accessible to and aimed at young adult readers, it deals with serious issues of racism, identity, assimilation, family expectations, and the search for self. Much of the novel draws on Lee’s own experiences growing up as the only Korean American student in a small town in Minnesota. It is a coming-of-age novel that not only explores the struggles of adolescence but also the psychological costs of being perceived as a perpetual foreigner in one’s own country.
Marie Myung-Ok Lee grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, a small mining town. Both of her parents fled North Korea before eventually immigrating to the United States. After finishing high school, Lee attended Brown University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. While Finding My Voice was her first novel, she has written several other young adult works, including If It Hadn’t Been for Yoon Jun (1993), Saying Goodbye (1994), Necessary Roughness (1996), and F Is for Fabulous (1999). In 2020, Finding My Voice was reissued by Soho Press. The novel received the American Library Association’s “Best Books for Reluctant Young Adult Readers” recognition, among many other awards and honors. Lee has also published works beyond her young adult fiction. Her most recent novel, The Evening Hero, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021. Lee has taught fiction writing at Yale University, served as a visiting lecturer in American Studies at Brown University, and been an adjunct professor at Columbia University. She is also a founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW).
The novel focuses on seventeen-year-old Ellen Sung, a Korean American high school senior living in the small town of Arkin, Minnesota. Ellen’s family is the only Korean family in town, making her someone who was constantly noticed which made her painfully aware of her differences. As the story begins, Ellen is preparing for her senior year in high school, hoping that graduation will finally provide an escape from a place she has never felt accepted.
From almost the first page of the book, Ellen struggles with the tension between her Korean heritage and her desire to fit into American culture. For instance, her mother lovingly packs her lunch with traditional Korean food, like litchi nuts, and on the way to the bus stop Ellen surreptitiously slips them into a garbage can. She is continuously fearful that her classmates will make fun of her. Throughout the novel, Lee reveals how even ordinary acts become emotionally charged when one feels like an outsider.
Interestingly, unlike many earlier immigrant novels, Finding My Voice is not directly focused on immigration itself. Although Ellen’s parents experienced the typical linguistic and cultural transitions of first-generation immigrants, Ellen is a second-generation immigrant whose struggle is not learning a new language or finding opportunities to interact with American citizens. Her issue is how to negotiate two identities at the same time. She is in the difficult position of being neither completely Korean nor completely accepted as an American. The feeling of living between two worlds is a major part of her experience as an adolescent.
Perhaps the major plot of the story is Ellen’s developing relationship with Tomper Sandel, a popular athlete admired by almost everyone in school. It is difficult for Ellen to imagine someone like Tomper really liking her because of an internalized doubt about interracial relationships, yet Tomper genuinely likes her for who she is rather than relating to her as some exotic curiosity. However, the relationship demonstrates the prejudice and othering embedded in a small-town community. It becomes an opportunity for gossip and racial comments disguised as jokes. Lee uses this romance to expose the social boundaries that racism creates.
The romance with Tomper ultimately serves less as a fairytale relationship than as a component of Ellen’s emotional maturity. Although their relationship does help her gain confidence, the novel’s real resolution is Ellen’s increasing acceptance of herself. As the school year progresses, Ellen gradually becomes less willing to remain quiet when there is evident discrimination. Earlier, she ignored the racist remarks of schoolmates, but by the end, she recognizes that silence only reinforces prejudice. Learning to speak honestly about her experiences with prejudice reveals the meaning of the title Finding My Voice.
The relationship with Tomper generates several problems within Ellen’s family, and perhaps Tomper’s as well. As is often the case, her Korean family has done a lot to establish themselves within America. So, they place great value on education, hard work, and respect for Korean culture and traditions. Like many first-generation parents, they want their daughter to preserve her identity as a Korean and not to stray too far from the nest. Even though they love their daughter, they do not understand why she wants so much to be accepted within American society. Ellen often interprets her parents’ strictness and controlling communication as attempts to control her just as she begins to find her way. It is not as though either side is completely wrong in their wishes; they simply look at the world from different historical experiences and find it difficult to know how to make the other understand.
Lee makes it clear through Ellen’s experiences that her attempts to erase her Korean heritage will not make her whiter. At the same time, she no longer feels entirely Korean. It is as though she is split in two, so that at times she fits nowhere in particular. This position of trying to live in two worlds is a common theme in many Korean American novels. Like Suzy Park in Suki Kim’s The Interpreter or Jane Re in Patricia Park’s Re Jane, these characters discover that the struggle for a new life in America comes at a cost, and they must somehow find a balance between the two cultures. They must resolve to accept who they really are within these contrasting cultures to finally feel at home.
Lee offers a close look at everyday racism toward immigrants in America. Rather than portraying dramatic acts of violence or discrimination, she tells a story of persistent, repeated forms of prejudice that seem to pile on top of each other. Ellen’s schoolmates continually cross boundaries of appropriateness through their insensitive comments and casual racial remarks, which are initially ignored but over time become much more hurtful. Together, these comments and casual remarks create an unwelcome environment that makes Ellen feel it is necessary to continually defend who she is. Lee’s awareness of this form of racism became a precursor to later writers who would become more open about subject in their work.
Lee’s work is also about exploring the process of assimilation. What happens when an immigrant wishes to fit into American society but discovers that, no matter how hard one tries, some people are still going to see them as a foreigner? Trying to cover up Korean traditions, like eating litchi nuts, will not necessarily make a person acceptable to peers. Lee does not portray assimilation as either a preservation or rejection of Korean traditions. Eventually, Ellen learns that peer acceptance cannot be achieved by hiding her Korean identity. It is only when she accepts herself as she is that she begins to gain the confidence to defend her identity.
The novel’s title encapsulates Ellen’s struggle to find her place. Her developing voice symbolizes her self-acceptance. This means more than having confidence; it means a willingness to speak out when prejudicial attitudes and inappropriate behaviors are obvious. Through most of the novel, Ellen avoids confrontation but finally realizes that staying quiet only allows prejudice to thrive. Her emerging voice makes it possible for Ellen to embrace her real identity rather than having to choose between her Korean and American identities. In the end, she demonstrates that it is quite possible for her to accept both as parts of her authentic self.
Ultimately, Finding My Voice is important within the Korean American genre because it turns an individual coming-of-age story into a broader discussion of race, identity, and belonging in America. Lee shows that finding one’s voice is inseparable from authentically finding a place of belonging. Ellen’s journey toward self-worth illustrates that genuine belonging cannot be achieved by erasing culture or traditions. It only comes by embracing the sometimes-difficult situation of trying to live between cultures. This means accepting both parts as equally valid, without apology. Lee brings Ellen close to this more fulfilling place by the end of the story.
Lee’s work speaks powerfully to the question of how different cultures encounter one another and how these encounters are reflected in the lives of immigrants to America. Like so many other Korean American writers, Lee treats this issue as a deeply ethical concern. Her stories attempt to portray the unique position of the other, the stranger, or the outsider and to encourage readers to consider what it means to encounter someone whose experiences and cultural background differ from their own. This ethical concern recalls the work of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and his concept of “facing,” in which the encounter with the face of the other creates an ethical obligation to recognize that person’s uniqueness and respond to his or her appeal. Such an encounter also changes the position of the representative of the dominant culture. Rather than expecting the other to change or assimilate, it requires a willingness to listen, to acknowledge differences, and to accept responsibility for the ways in which one’s own actions affect those who are not the same as the dominant culture.
In this story of a young second-generation woman from an immigrant family, Lee creates a persuasive vehicle for understanding the nature of racism and the suffering that immigrants and their children can experience in their search for a means of belonging in America. In one sense, the story places the reader in the position of either welcoming or judging Ellen and her situation. We are forced to confront the assumptions and prejudices that shape her experiences and to recognize how deeply such attitudes can affect a young person’s developing sense of self. Ellen certainly has not solved every problem in her life, but she has made significant progress. Prejudice and racism continue to exist in her small town, and cultural conflicts remain within her family. Yet Ellen enters adulthood with greater confidence, a clearer understanding of her identity, and the courage to define herself on her own terms. Her growth suggests that finding one’s voice does not mean simply learning how to speak louder or resist those who cause pain. It means developing the confidence to acknowledge all the parts of oneself without allowing others to determine which parts are acceptable.
About the Author
C. Clark Triplett is Emeritus Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor of Psychology at Missouri Baptist University. He served as co-editor of The Final Crossing: Death and Dying in Literature (Peter Lang, 2015), a co-editor of Worlds Gone Awry: Essays on Dystopian Fiction (McFarland, 2018), a co-editor of Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction: Essays on the Moral Imagination (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), and co-editor of Echoes from the Hills: Critical Essays on Ozarks Literature (forthcoming, University of Arkansas Press). Triplett’s poems have appeared in Cantos, Fireflies’ Light, and the Asahi Haikuist Network. He earned a BA from Southwest Baptist University, an MDiv from Covenant Theological Seminary, an MSEd from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and a PhD from Saint Louis University.
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