Min Jin Lee, author of the National Book Award finalist Pachinko and New York State’s first Korean American author laureate, said she would not be where she is today without public libraries. Specifically, the Elmhurst branch of Queens (N.Y.) Public Library, which was her refuge after she immigrated to the US at age 7.
“As a person who was an outsider, in order for me to learn how to behave in certain spaces, I read these old novels,” Lee told attendees at the American Library Association’s 2026 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago on June 27. “I think it’s the most romantic thing I could say, but my life has been liberated by public education.”
Education is also the lens that Lee uses to bring the Koh family, the characters of her latest novel, American Hagwon (Cardinal, September), into focus. The book examines the hagwon system, or private “cram schools” that a majority of Korean students attend, as it intersects with the Korean diaspora across three continents.
“[The hagwon] became my organizing metaphor,” said Lee, “all of us struggling to pay for the education we receive in life.”
Set between two inflection points—the 1997 financial crisis in Asia and the Great Recession that started in 2007—American Hagwon is also largely a book about how market forces contribute to domestic struggle.
“I’m really interested in economic shocks,” Lee said. “[Money] is such a primary motivating force for individuals.” She cited George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, and Sinclair Lewis as authors whose characters experience economic downfall. Lee also likened the themes in her book to the economic uncertainty surrounding the generative artificial intelligence (AI) boom.
“We’re living within this AI tech bubble, which affects all of our 401(k)s,” Lee said. “What are we going to do? We don’t have a choice of the time in that we live.”
For her part, Lee said she wants to use her two-year tenure as New York State author laureate—“they didn’t give me a sash,” she joked—to be out in public, talking about books.
“I do think that books have always been this kind of fortress in which we can save democracy,” Lee said. She credits an essay in Sister Outsider by professor, activist, and librarian Audre Lorde with helping her become more political during her college years.
She also acknowledged the mission creep that has too often become a reality for libraries, such as the social services that these institutions administer, and the political animus they absorb.
“Libraries have become something that isn’t just books… [and] very often libraries are the first to be attacked,” Lee said. “Librarians have borne a greater sense of responsibility than the average person. It might not be the job they signed up for.”
“I want to thank each of you for coming by,” Lee added, “because the librarians are the superheroes.”
