When: Thursday, May 2, 2024 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Where: Rolfe 2125
Reception to Follow.
RSVP.
Join us in a conversation with journalist Margaret Juhae Lee as she discusses her poignant memoir,Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History. In Starry Field, Lee sets out on a search for her family’s history lost to the darkness of Korea’s colonial decades, and contends with the shockwaves of violence that followed them over four generations and across continents.
Combining investigative journalism, oral history, and archival research, Margaret reveals the truth about the grandfather she never knew. What she found is that Lee Chul Ha, her grandfather who left her grandmother and two young sons in 1936, was not a source of shame; he was a student revolutionary imprisoned in 1929for protesting the Japanese government’s colonization of Korea. He was a hero—and eventually honored as aPatriot of South Korea almost 60 years after his death. But reclaiming her grandfather’s legacy, in the end, isn’twhat Margaret finds the most valuable. It is through the series of three long-form interviews with her grandmother that Margaret finally finds a sense of recognition she’s been missing her entire life. A story of healing old wounds and the reputation of an extraordinary young man, Starry Field bridges the tales of two women, generations and oceans apart, who share the desire to build family in someplace called home.
