A new coming-of-age novel by Chang-rae Lee examines how we become who we are
Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri MillerShow Notes
If you remember the first time you left your family to go to summer camp, you probably remember how that time marked you. You leave as a child, but after spending a week or two away from home and all that’s familiar, you return changed.
Chang-rae Lee’s new novel, “A Tender Age,” follows a young boy, almost 11, as he begins the shift toward adolescence. A few tumultuous events make Jeon-Gi very aware of his new and growing personhood — and then he leaves for summer camp, where he experiments with different wants to be seen and to act in his suddenly widening world.
Told through the now-adult Jeon-Gi’s memories, the story asks questions who how we become who we are.
Click here
“We’re not just formed by the world,” Lee tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “There’s part of us that’s ready to be forming on its own. So the world doesn’t only form us, it reveals us. There’s an interplay between those things, that sometimes can go in a direction we didn’t expect.”
Guest:
Chang-rae Lee is the author of many books, including “Native Speaker,” which won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction. His new book is “A Tender Age.” When he’s not writing his own work, Lee teaches writing to students at Stanford University.
Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.
Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.
More from Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller
Barbara Kingsolver is a lauded writer. But the art doesn’t stop there. She’s also a pianist.
Min Jin Lee was disappointed she didn’t get to come to Talking Volumes in 2017 to talk about her novel “Pachinko.” She says that’s probably because it struggled initially. Her editor quit just three months before the book was published. Her husband lost his job the day “Pachinko” was released. And besides The New York Times and USA Today, no media companies would review her book.
To mark the fall member drive, Kerri Miller dips back into three conversations she’s had this year with authors who write about nature — and thus, wrestle with what they see climate change doing to our planet. How do we live richly in the midst of a great unraveling?
Miss Marple rides again in Lucy Foley’s new novel, “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel.” This time, the beloved spinster sleuth finds herself on holiday, at a glamorous and isolated hotel nestled high in the Swiss Alps — where a body is quickly discovered on the first gondola ride of the day.
Carol Anderson has been sounding the alarm for years.