About Li-Young Lee’s Poem, “This Hour and What is Dead”?
Does anyone know where I could find any info on possible autobiographical references in this poem? The speaker asks if his dead brother knows of his “birthplace set to torches” and the speaker is a fugitive running away from something, etc. Does this refer in any way to the poet’s life and are there any sources you can cite for me? Thanks!
Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. His father, who was a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, relocated his family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University. His father spent a year in an Indonesian prison camp where he was tortured because of his belief in Christianity. In 1959 the Lee family fled the country to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964.
Li-Young Lee has a fascinating family history. Lee’s maternal grandfather was the first president of the Republic of China. His father, however, came from a family of businessmen and gangsters. During the Chinese Civil War, Lee’s father was attached to a nationalist general who switched sides, which resulted in Dr. Lee becoming the personal physician to Mao Tse-tung for a brief time.
Li-Young Lee was born after the war when his family had moved to Indonesia. While Lee was still a toddler, his father was jailed for political reasons for nearly two years. When he was eventually released, the family moved about for a while. In Hong Kong Lee’s father became a hugely successful evangelical preacher and businessman.
Lee’s father was an emotional man and, after an argument, he dropped everything and left with his family, finally settling in the United States, where Dr. Lee became the minister of a small church in Pennsylvania.
Li-Young Lee grew up in the US and studied at the University of Pittsburgh. He currently lives in Chicago.
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