Mary Paik Lee

rdf:langString Mary Paik Lee

rdf:langString Mary Paik Lee

rdf:langString Mary Paik Lee

rdf:langString Paek Kwangsǒn

rdf:langString American

rdf:langString 백광선

rdf:langString Writer

rdf:langString Baek Gwangseon

rdf:langString Mary Paik Lee (August 17, 1900 – 1995) was a Korean American writer. She is most known for her autobiography, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America. She was born Paek Kuang-Sun in Pyongyang in the Korean Empire (now the capital of North Korea). Her parents decided to leave Korea when the Japanese and their growing presence in Korea took control over their home. In 1905, they arrived in Hawaii where they started anew. Her father, Paik Sin Koo, came from a line of ministers and teachers but when they arrived in Hawaii, he became a contract laborer on a sugar plantation. They faced extreme discrimination and eventually moved to Riverside, California in 1906. Over the course of her life, Lee, her parents, and her husband would suffer many hardships. Her memoir, Quiet Odyssey, was published in 1990. It is noted for being one of the few memoirs by an Asian American woman, and the only memoir by a Korean American woman that covers the majority of the twentieth century. She provides an important cultural viewpoint on the last century, from the perspective of one of America's first Korean pioneers.