Min Jin Lee Wants Us to Rethink Education

For Min Jin Lee, the process of writing fiction usually begins with a deep dive into reality. She spends years researching, traveling and interviewing people.

That process underscored her belief that education was a common and central value for Koreans in diaspora. But it was also a complicated value, one that often resulted in extreme competitiveness and impossible expectations.

In her new novel, “American Hagwon,” she tells the story of the Kohs, a middle-class family of five. The parents are fixated on attaining the best possible education for their children, thinking it will guarantee success and upward mobility. But when the 1997 Asian financial crisis hits, they find themselves having to start over as immigrants in America.

This week, Lee returns to “The Book Review” podcast to talk about how education and community play out across her sprawling new novel, which our critic Alexandra Jacobs said “demands to be pressed into friends’” hands.

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