More Attention for Jid Lee's TO KILL A TIGER: A MEMOIR OF KOREA

Jid Lee's To Kill a Tiger continues to draw attention from critics and reviewers:

"Spanning five generations, this memoir explores the author's upbringing and the sociopolitical climate of Korea during the last century through the anecdotes and interpretations of her family. The tales come mainly from her father as told to her mother. (Fathers, we learn, would only discuss such matters with their sons and sometimes their wives, but never with their "unworthy" daughters). Historical lessons such as these are strewn throughout the text, interspersed with details from Lee's day-to-day life as a child and teenager and anecdotes told to her by her family members (although most are the author's own). These are all enhanced by the inclusion of black and white photographs of her family and community placed in nearly every chapter. . . What I applaud is this: It is a story of a tough, feminist kid who goes through hell and emerges victorious against everyone's expectations. Lee triumphantly gives patriarchy the finger and fulfills her dreams, giving women everywhere--and especially those languishing in a sexist society more oppressive than that of Western culture--hope for everything they wish to accomplish." -Natalia Real, Feminist Review

"The political sundering of Korea by no means was a simple split. To Kill a Tiger is by author Jid Lee's words, not just a memoir of herself, but a memoir of Korea, torn apart by the last six decades of a harsh standoff that started with a vicious war. Looking towards the beginning of the conflict, she focuses on the social change of the time, where in spite of the harsh conflict, people still wanted nothing more out of the world than to simply survive and live their lives. Discussing everything from the Japanese occupation in the first half of the twentieth century and forward, To Kill a Tiger is a fascinating and informative read that should not be ignored." - Midwest Book Review

More Praise for Jid Lee's Korean Memoir TO KILL A TIGER

Maria Browning reviews To Kill a Tiger by Jid Lee in Chapter 16, the online book review home of the Tennessee Humanities Commission: "Jid Lee's To Kill a Tiger: A Memoir of Korea begins with a gruesome family myth told to six-year-old Lee by her grandmother. A beautiful, virtuous ancestor, so the story goes, was guaranteed the eternal good will of the gods toward all her descendants. There was one condition: that she let herself be eaten alive by a tiger. In the West such a tale would likely end with a last-minute reprieve or a miraculous escape from the tiger's belly—but in the Korea of Lee's childhood, happy endings weren't so simple. The story concludes with the ancestor's kin finding "one of her breasts, half-eaten, under a tall oak tree, and a hand with three fingers on the grass near the trail." But her descendants do happily prosper, at least until a less virtuous male of the family spoils the deal, and Lee's grandmother drives home the moral of the story: "Women in your clan have all been so brave and firm. They never hesitated to do anything for the good of the family, just like the tiger woman. They were warriors. You, my dear, are going to be a fighter, following them.

To Kill a Tiger is the story of how Lee did get out, eventually emigrating to the United States and becoming a professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. Beyond this narrative of liberation, it's the account of a young woman's attempt to resolve her feelings about a family that is loving and in many ways supportive of her dreams but also repressive, demeaning, and violent. Lee was born in South Korea in 1955, and as the subtitle suggests, her book is also a remembrance of that country in the decades after the post-WWII bifurcation, when memories of the North-South conflict between 1950 and 1953, as well as the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945, were still fresh in the minds of Koreans.

The backdrop to Lee's troubled childhood is Korea's turbulent political history, which she describes in some depth—partly in order to explain her father's predicament and partly to present an alternative to the standard pro-American version of the country's history. Lee sees the U.S. as a bad actor in the Korean conflict, quashing a genuine democratic reform movement in the South and installing the rabidly anti-communist dictatorship that imprisoned and tortured her father. . .In the final chapter of the book, she writes of a dream in which she comes to realize that her image of America was an impossible ideal, "a place where everything was perfect and nothing could survive." Making peace with the reality of America's possibilities, she also acknowledges its flaws.

This reconciliation is mirrored in her relationship with her family and the culture that shaped it. During her years in America, Lee comes to see the many ways her family showed love for her, in spite of their harshness. She comes to appreciate her father's unyielding sense of principle, seeing that his example gave her the strength to challenge her traditional role. Speaking of her younger sister, who is a prominent Korean journalist, Lee says, "Two—not just one—very strong-minded feminists were born and raised in one relentlessly patriarchal family, and this ironic outcome proves to me what a great family it was." She has resolved the dilemma presented in her grandmother's story and defeated the tiger with courage, perseverance, and insight. It seems like a very Korean happy ending."

Jid Lee discusses TO KILL A TIGER at WomensMemoirs.com

Overlook author Jid Lee is visiting WomensMemoirs.com this week, so stop by to say hello and to read her guest blog post about the process of writing and editing her new book To Kill A Tiger: A Memoir of Korea. In her post, Lee provides insight into understanding one's self, family, culture and how those factors define us. She also provides a writing prompt to help inspire self-reflection or your own memoir writing process.

Leave a comment at Jid Lee's guest post and Overlook will enter you in a contest to receive a copy of To Kill A Tiger. This remarkable memoir is both a unique autobiography by a Korean-American woman and a rare authentic portrait of 20th century Korea. Grace Cho has said “Lee's accessible and engaging writing style, combined with her authoritative voice on Korean history and politics, makes To Kill a Tiger an invaluable resource to anyone who wants to know more about the divided Korean peninsula and the United States' role in it…The publication of this book is a triumph and a testament to Lee's courage.”

Do you have a question for Jid Lee about what it was like to grow up as a female in South Korea, the consequences her family suffered as a result of the Korean War, or how it felt to write To Kill A Tiger? Please leave your questions at WomensMemoirs.com or you can join editors Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler in their live interview with Jid Lee on Thursday January 14th at 8:00pm EST. Just dial 712-432-0600 and entering the access code: 998458#. Aside from your usual long distance charges, there is no cost to participate!