Chang-Rae Lee talks about writing, the self, and the relationship between his father's experiences during the Korean War and the events of his harrowing new novel, The Surrendered (2010), on Tavis Smiley last week, March 18, 2010.
"In some ways, this book is a response to all the silence that I had met about the Korean War, both from my family and from a lot of people. Most people who are inside that kind of trauma, inside that kind of conflict, never want to talk about it. So for the purposes of the book, of course, I turn that inside-out. I take that silence and completely peel away every layer of anguish and scarring."
