Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History
by Margaret Juhae Lee (Author) Format: Hardcover
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (29)
This poignant memoir traces 4 generations of family trauma against the backdrop of Korea's modern history for readers who love a sweeping intergenerational story like Pachinko and The Return.
Journalist and critic Margaret Juhae Lee tells the story of her search for the truth about the life and early death of her grandfather, Lee Chul Ha, a student revolutionary who was jailed for protesting the Japanese colonization of Korea in 1929.
At the end of her life, her grandmother, Halmani, opens up about Margaret's grandfather, the "criminal" who was imprisoned and a source of shame for the family. What Margaret unearths is a trove of extraordinary material concerning the life of her grandfather, information that both affirms and explodes what she had always believed about herself, her father, and their legacy.
Combining investigative journalism, oral history, and archival research, Starry Field weaves together the stories of Margaret's grandparents, parents, and herself against the backdrop of Korea's tumultuous modern history, from the colonial era to its technological boom.
The moving memoir is told in a series of short chapters anchored by 3 long-form interviews Margaret conducted with Halmani before her death. Though she initially sets out to uncover the secrecy around her grandfather's life, what she finds instead is a deep bond between her and her grandmother--2 women, 2 generations apart, living on opposite sides of the world, with the shared desire to start a family and find something called home.
20 memorable photographs will be included.
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From the Publisher
About the Author
Margaret Juhae Lee is an Oakland-based writer and a former literary editor of The Nation magazine. She has been the recipient of a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University, and a Korean Studies Fellowship from the Korean Foundation. She is also a Tin House scholar, and has been awarded residencies at the Mesa Refuge, the Anderson Center, and Mineral School. In 2020, she was named "Person of the Year" by the Sangcheol Cultural Welfare Foundation in Kongju, South Korea, for her work in honouring her grandfather, Patriot Lee Chul Ha. Her articles, reviews, and interviews have been published in The Nation, Newsday, Elle, ARTnews, The Advocate, The Progressive and The Rumpus.
Product details
Publisher : MELVILLE HOUSE
Publication date : 9 April 2024
Language : English
Print length : 288 pages
ISBN-10 : 1685890938
ISBN-13 : 978-1685890933
Item weight : 1.05 kg
Dimensions : 15.9 x 1.96 x 23.57 cm
Customer Reviews:
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (29)
Margaret Juhae Lee
About the author
Margaret Juhae Lee is the author of Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History. She received a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University and a Korean Studies Fellowship from the Korean Foundation in support of research for her book. Previously, she was an editor for the Books and the Arts section at The Nation magazine. Her articles, interviews and book reviews have been published in The Nation, Newsday, Elle, ARTnews, The Advocate, The Progressive and most recently in The Rumpus and Ploughshares Blog . She was a contributing writer at Oakland Magazine, where she covered the local maker community. Her article, “Seoul’s Celluloid Soul,” originally published in The Nation, was anthologized in Readings in Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture.
Margaret has an M.A. in Journalism from NYU’s Cultural Reporting & Criticism Program and an M.A. in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin. She has attended the Writer’s Hotel, Lit Camp and Tin House writing workshops and was awarded residencies at the Mesa Refuge, Anderson Center and Mineral School, where she received a fellowship from the Sustainable Arts Foundation for parents who are writers.
In 2020, she was named “Person of the Year” by the Sangcheol Cultural Welfare Foundation in Kongju, South Korea, for her work in honoring her grandfather, Patriot Lee Chul Ha, with a gift from her family to his alma mater, Kongju High School.
A former college radio DJ, Margaret spends her free time listening to New Wave and indie rock while driving her extremely sporty children to soccer practices. She and her family survived the pandemic with the help of Brownie, a rescue dog from Korea. ===
From other countries
C.N.
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read- put on your reading list
Reviewed in the United States on 30 May 2025
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Excellent! Reading for a second time; I gifted my copy to a relative. Am picking up a few details I didn’t catch the first time.( I also re watch good films), Beautifully written, well- organized (includes a family tree and timeline). Starry Field takes the reader through time and history traveling between continents and in the U.S. This book has sparked readers to think and learn oral histories from living relatives. Since reading this book I was drawn to reading other memoirs noted by the author and look forward to reading more from this writer.
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TK
5.0 out of 5 stars An important story about family history and healing
Reviewed in Canada on 16 May 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
This is a moving account about how important stories about ourselves, our family and our heritage are. Margaret traces the mystery of her grandfather’s life, which was hidden in a shroud of shame and secrecy, until she was able to unearth his heroism and tell a different story for herself, her father and her children. The importance of stories and heritage is clear when she helps her father heal from his internalized shame through knowledge and recognition of who his father really was. I love the way Margaret weaves together vignettes of family and scholar interviews, and how she offers a close account of her search for elusive documents. This book is filled with tenderness and humour. A pleasure to read, and a much-needed story for us all.
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Kevin Tuerff
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing! Sometimes finding truth about family history sets you free
Reviewed in the United States on 15 March 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Margaret Juhae Lee’s memoir, a work 20 years in the making, is well worth the wait. As a fellow Gen-Xer, I also knew very little about Korea’s history and occupation by Japan.
Margaret tells a beautiful story how she fell into an investigative research study about her unknown deceased grandfather, simply to help her father look for answers when he fell ill.
Lee’s background in journalism came in handy as she traveled to Korea to interview her living grandmother. She skillfully found a way to get her to open a vault of stories the widow wanted to keep hidden.
As years went by, Lee discovered the journey of writing this memoir was linked to many unanswered questions in her personal life.
There is so much to learn here for non-Koreans about Korean history and culture. And there are added layers of insights about the AAPI community in America and the struggles they face.
I’m normally a slow book reader but this is a page-turner. I didn’t want to put down the book. Buy it and enjoy!
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Kevin Burns
5.0 out of 5 stars loved this book, a page-turner
Reviewed in the United States on 18 March 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
I loved this book, and it surprised me in many ways. I’m usually not a fan of non-linear arrangements, but here I found it worked incredibly well as the author wove together the pieces of her grandfather’s story with her own story into an effective narrative. One of the things that surprised me was how suspenseful the book was. Throughout I was captivated in the mystery of figuring out two things: 1) what is the real story of the author’s grandfather, and 2) what will happen to the author as a result of this discovery. Because of this, I found the book hard to put down. Secondly, I was surprised how much the book resonated with me. I’m not Korean or Korean-America; yet I identified with the underlying theme of family and the sometimes unspoken things that are part of what makes us family. This book stirred up a lot of thoughts and emotions in me that will stick with me for a while. I highly recommend this book!
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Brian Kimmel
5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Work of Art
Reviewed in the United States on 16 October 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Starry Field was my start to a renewed interest in memoir and its place in storytelling of historical events. What I searched for most throughout my journey reading Starry Field, was some semblance of myself through the pages. Originally interested as it pertains to Japan's occupation in Asia during a period of tumult that resembles my own family's experience during WWII. The beauty of Starry Field is its intense journalistic style merged with personal narrative. It speaks to historical accounts, interviews, and brief history lessons in an approachable and humanistic fashion. I was drawn to the author's own story in writing the story, a book about writing a book, and a journey of discovery that filled the pages and compelled me to want to know more. Thoughtful design including cover and interior with photographs helped me to be in that journey with the author as she engaged in this soulful, investigative work.
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techie511
5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous
Reviewed in the United States on 4 May 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
I found this book to be incredibly interesting and well written - full of humor, poignant reflections, and beautiful imagery. Driven by missing information about her grandfather, the author's investigation leads to an understanding about so much more and an opportunity for healing for some. I had initially assumed that the authors search would be presented chronologically. However I was pleasantly surprised that the story was Instead organized around the interviews she did with her grandmother to learn about her family. I found that this served to help the reader experience for themselves the authors own journey of discovery (her memoir), as that journey wasn’t linear and took decades to piece together. I learned so much from this book, enjoyed it immensely, and am so glad I read it.
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LTS68
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful memoir and important era in Korean history
Reviewed in the United States on 13 April 2024
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Wonderful memoir and fascinating introduction (for me!) to early 20th century Korean history told through the lens of the author's family saga. I loved the way she wove together a beautiful memoir about her own experience growing up in the United States, as well as her trips to Korea over the years -- both to visit family and to research their history. An inspiring story of her Communist grandfather's resistance to the Japanese occupation and oppression of Korean culture, as well as his granddaughter's gift to her family -- past, present and future --by telling not just his forgotten story but her own as well. Highly recommend!
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Peggy Collins
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful memoir
Reviewed in the United States on 18 March 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Born of Korean parents and growing up in Houston, Texas in the 70's and 80's Margaret Juhae Lee didn't look (and she certainly didn't think) like the young people around her. By the time she was an adult crisscrossing the country she was starting to realize that "home" had a great deal to do with the family who came before her, specifically her paternal grandfather, Lee Chul Ha, who died in Korea when he was 27. Very little was spoken about him until Margaret, using her journalism skills, starts a years-long quest to uncover who this man was and, more importantly, how his very DNA influenced so much of the person she became. Join her in the search for Lee Chul Ha's incredible story. It is a story that, thanks to Margaret, will be remembered.
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HM
5.0 out of 5 stars Intimate and interesting history telling
Reviewed in the United States on 12 March 2025
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
As a Japanese, it took me determination to read story on Japanese colonialism written by Korean American writer.
Unexpectedly the story gave very personal intimate perspective of the author.
I could feel the Korean people at the time and nowadays.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book on so many levels....
Reviewed in the United States on 5 April 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
I loved this book as a mother, writer, and daughter. So much of it is about the search for self-compassion and the steps one person needed to take to tell her family's story. And holy cow. What an ending and what a female role model--both in the grandmother and in the writer. Don't want to give anything away, but I love it when one story turns about to be about something/someone completely different than I expected as a reader. Highly recommend!
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Susan
5.0 out of 5 stars An enlightening book
Reviewed in the United States on 21 March 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Growing up in the 70s, my knowledge of Korea and the conflict of the 1950s was limited to watching M*A*S*H on TV. Reading this book opened my eyes to a whole other point of view. Where we were told that the Communists were terrible people during the War, we learn that they were a response to even worse conditions, under Japanese control. I highly recommend this book.
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Judith Long
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
Reviewed in the United States on 7 April 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Starry Field is a spellbinding tale of recovered family history, how it feels to be an American child of Korean parents, and the evolving of the self. Margaret Lee doggedly persists until the lost story of her Korean grandfather is brought to light. Page turner.
—Judith Long
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Kris Patterson
5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful Memoir
Reviewed in the United States on 10 April 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
I absolutely loved this memoir about recovering lost family history, living life feeling like an outsider and being able to connect to one’s roots. This is a very touching book - I highly recommend it.
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C.F.
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and engrossing!
Reviewed in the United States on 10 March 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
A deeply moving family history that pulls you in and covers so much more.
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