Julia Lee (writer)

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Julia Lee
BornJulia Sun-Joo Lee
1976 (age 47–48)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Pen nameJulia Sonneborn
Occupation
  • Writer
  • professor
Education
Subject African-American literature
Website
profjulialee.com

Julia Sun-Joo Lee (born 1976) is an American writer and professor of English at Loyola Marymount University. She studies African-American literature. Outside of academia, she has published a romance novel under a pen name.

Contents

Early life and education

Lee was born to Korean immigrants in Los Angeles. [1] She spoke no English before preschool, but once she was there she lost her Korean fluency. [1] She grew up in Palms and attended an all-girls Catholic high school in the era of the killing of Latasha Harlins and the Rodney King riots. [1] [2] Her parents owned a Pioneer Chicken restaurant in Hawthorne that was damaged during the riots. [3] [4]

Following her graduation from Princeton in 1998, Lee briefly worked in management consulting. [3] [5] She attended graduate school at Harvard University, where she developed an interest in African-American literature and studied under Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Jamaica Kincaid. [1] [3] She received her PhD in English literature in 2008. [5]

Career

Lee's academic works "[challenge] the legacy of mostly white literary scholarship". [6] The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel (2010) examines the influence of slave narratives written in the United States on various works of British fiction, such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre , Thackeray's Pendennis , Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South , and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations . [7] Our Gang (2015) follows the lives of the African-American child stars of the 1920s short film series Our Gang (or The Little Rascals) and considers the series's place in the country's racial history. [8] [9] [10]

Lee was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California before joining the faculty of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2013. [5] She became an associate professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 2017. [11] Under the pen name Julia Sonneborn, she published a romance novel, By the Book (2018), inspired by Jane Austen's Persuasion . [6] [12] Biting the Hand (2023), a memoir by Lee, deals with Korean-American identity from her childhood to college years to professional life. [3] [6]

Personal life

Lee has two children and her husband,Bradley Adam Sonneborn. [11]

Published works

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Milena's Interview with Dr. Julia Lee". Loyola Marymount University: Women of Color Oral History Project. Retrieved September 2, 2023.
  2. ↑ Mitchell, Elvis (May 18, 2016). "Julia Lee: Our Gang: A Racial History of 'The Little Rascals'". KCRW . Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Ho, Jean Chen (April 18, 2023). "Becoming Asian American, From 'Neither/Nor' to 'Both/And'". The New York Times . Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  4. ↑ Totten, Kristy (March 25, 2015). "Weekly Q&A: UNLV Literature Professor Julia Lee Delves Into All the Shades of America". Las Vegas Weekly . Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 Watson, Jamal Eric (January 29, 2014). "Korean Julia Sun-Joo Lee Brings New Face to Black Literature". Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  6. 1 2 3 Alford, Emily (February 10, 2023). "Julia Lee Reckons with Race in 'Biting the Hand'". Publishers Weekly . Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  7. ↑ Kaplan, Cora (September 26, 2013). "The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel". review19.org (review). Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  8. ↑ Byrne, Cara (Spring 2017). "Our Gang: A Racial History of The Little Rascals by Julia Lee (review)". The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth. 10 (2): 281–283. doi:10.1353/hcy.2017.0033.
  9. ↑ Pennanen, Valerie H. (Winter 2017). "Our Gang: A Racial History of the Little Rascals by Julia Lee (review)". Film & History. 47 (2): 72–74. doi:10.1353/flm.2017.0047.
  10. ↑ Mostrom, Tony (January 19, 2016). "The Book Our Gang Reveals the Complicated Racial History of the Little Rascals". LA Weekly . Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  11. 1 2 Zuerlein, Ava (October 26, 2023). "7 Burning Questions with professor Julia Lee". The Los Angeles Loyolan. Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  12. ↑ "By the Book". Kirkus Reviews . November 27, 2017. Retrieved November 2, 2023.
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