photograph by Orion Letizi
News and Reviews
- 16 Must-Read Memoirs About Health Written by Women, Self Magazine, March 6, 2018
- 7 New Memoirs by Women Around the World Time Magazine, March 10, 2017.
- 6 Asian American Memoirs To Read For Women’s History Month, NBC News, March 2017.
- “8Books Review: ‘Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember'” 8Asians, February 28, 2017.
“Lee writes in a way that bridges this distance (a stroke at 33 is after all quite rare and unusual) to reflect on what made her who she was and how to adjust in the aftermath. It’s not a this happened then this happened then this happened kind of memoir, though those details are included, but rather a memoir that takes us on a journey through her thought process and her damaged and healing brain.”
- 34 Books By Women of Color to Read This Year: Searching for Unicorns in Publishers’ Catalogs, Electric Literature, February 20, 2017.
- Business Insider review of TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU DON’T REMEMBER: “A new book tells the story of what it’s like to lose your short-term memory at the age of 33”
“…a fascinating exploration of how memory works.”
- New York Times Book Review of TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU DON’T REMEMBER: “After a Stroke at Age 33, This Memoir’s Author Wrote Herself Back to Life”
- Kirkus Review of TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU DON’T REMEMBER:
With careful thought and new understanding, the author explores the enduring mind-body connection with herself at the nexus of it all.
A fascinating exploration of personal identity from a writer whose body is, thankfully, “no longer at war.”
- “I Had a Stroke at 33” is one of BuzzFeed’s favorite personal essays of 2014:
13 Of Our Favorite Personal Essays We Published This Year
A woman who confronted her abusive stepfather. A man who bought a house in Detroit for $500. A 33-year-old who suffered and survived a stroke. Reflections on love, loss, and life in these great essays. - The Chicago Tribune gave “I Had a Stroke at 33” a shoutout:
Hyung-Oak Lee writes about the brain’s basic biology in a way that makes it easy for the layperson to understand. What’s harder to impress is the surreal, frightening and occasionally oddly beautiful world she inhabits as she recovers.
- Vouched Books names “Date and Time of Loss” as “Best Thing I Read this Week”:
Lee doesn’t mess around. She tells her story, unflinchingly, full knowing she’s picking at old scabs, tracing her fingers over old scars—literally and figuratively, we discover. From a car accident in Seattle to a few years later when her husband tells her, over the phone, that he wants a divorce, Lee’s essay knocks the wind out of you…”
- Thank you to the National Geographic blog for the shout out! They categorized my stroke essay as “science writing”; I’m totally delighted.
Interviews
- Debutante Ball, July 13, 2019
- A Matriarchy of Bees: Q&A With Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, The Rumpus with Lyz Lenz, February 28, 2018
- The Stroke That Changed My Life; Interview with Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, Top of Mind with Judy Rose, BYU Radio, May 1, 2017
- “Living With a 15-Minute Memory; BBC Outlook, BBC Outlook, April 24, 2017
- Interview with Christine Hyung-Oak Lee on Reading Women podcast, February 2017
- “After A Stroke At 33, A Writer Relies On Journals To Piece Together Her Own Story” / NPR Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, February 2017
- “Like drawing a chair by drawing everything around the chair”: An interview with Christine Hyung-Oak Lee SmokeLong Quarterly Guest Editor Interview, November 2015
- “What If Reality Suddenly Fell Apart?” This Is Actually Happening Podcast, March 2015
- Online Exclusive: Audio Excerpt and Q&A with Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, Hyphen Magazine, March 2015
- After Amy Tan: An Asian American Literature Roundtable The Toast, February 2015
- Writing Like an Asian — Feature: Five Qs Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, January 2015
“As for critics — I once had an editor who wanted me to explain Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, before she would put my story into production. I flat out refused to do so. I ended up withdrawing my piece. Sometimes, the responsibility falls on the reader to do that research. Sometimes, I expect the reader to have that knowledge. I want the reader to feel like this is something he or she should already know. It’s not my responsibility to translate everything, because that furthers the thinking that it’s not their responsibility to know the history of people of color in this country. And for the record, that editor was African American, and the editor of a litmag that published writers of color. So we’re all suspect.”
- Surviving a Stroke at 33 (and Blogging About it) with Mark Armstrong of Longreads/Wordpress, October 2014
“The blog was one of the first places to which I turned when I had my stroke, before I knew I’d had a stroke. I wrote in my journal, too — but I turned to my blog in the wake of my stroke, which for me was a largely isolating event. I made some great friends. Got support that way. It was my village, for a time.”
- Babies plus texting equals ‘Mommy Thumb’ — and ‘Mr. Mom Thumb,’ too TODAY Show/NBC, August 2014
- Behind the Scenes: Interview with Christine Lee Zilka and Jennifer Derilo of Kartika Review HTMLGIANT, October 2013
- Writing and Race: Interview with Bill Cheng and Christine Lee Zilka ALIST Magazine, August 2013
- The Six Question Sex Interview The Nervous Breakdown, October 2011
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