For decades, in critically acclaimed novels such as “Native Speaker” and “On Such a Full Sea,” Chang-rae Lee avoided writing autobiographically. Then a bit of his own story crept into “My Year Abroad.” And now, with the poignant and moving coming-of-age tale, “A Tender Age,” he has more fully embraced his own past – to a certain extent.
The book is set in 1976 in the suburbs of New York, where the nearly 11-year-old protagonist, JG, and his feral friends are left unsupervised to play sports and games – as well as sometimes engage in fights, bullying and racist outbursts. JG is then sent off to a Korean church summer camp, where he idolizes his counselor, makes new friends, and thinks a lot about a girl. In each of these places, he tries both to fit in and stand out, but throughout the book, JG constantly finds or makes his own trouble.
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In a video interview from Maine, where he was visiting family (Lee lives in San Francisco and is a professor at Stanford University), Lee said the basic outlines and emotional truths are autobiographical even though the more traumatic events are pure fiction.
The story immerses readers in JG’s world but is narrated by him as an adult, intervening in the story to provide perspective.
“It was something that I thought about a lot before even writing,” Lee said. “I had to recreate and embody the intensity of that boy and his swirl of emotions, the confusion and exuberance, so you’re in this kid’s chest. But if I didn’t have this narrator, it would just be a YA novel. The narrator had to contextualize very subtly, but at every step of the way.”
On August 17, Lee will be appearing at Skylight Books to discuss the book with “Minari” director Lee Isaac Chung. Lee recently wrote for the TV series “Pachinko,” wrote the screenplay for Ang Lee’s forthcoming “Gold Mountain,” and is working with Chung on a new series about a Korean-American truffle hunter in Umbria.
“I’m glad he’s reading this book and will talk about it,” Lee says. “Maybe he’ll be interested in adapting it.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. JG is often confused by the grown-up world and feels a half-step behind his peers. How much of that comes from being an immigrant’s son?
We all feel a half step behind when we’re JG’s age, but he’s another quarter step behind because he’s only rooted in his family, and they’re not rooted in this world, so he’s constantly questioning himself.
When the older JG is looking back, he isn’t angry. He knows everyone was doing the best they could, but there was a lot of ignorance. He was fending for himself and had this inability to break his own silence. A lot of kids face that, especially when they’re bullied, but the accelerant to all that is the immigrant part.
If he could say one sentence when things happen to him, maybe he’d get off this bad track he’s on. People were willing to hear it, which is frustrating for the reader but also the tragedy of this story.
There’s a melancholy, a mourning in the narration. There’s a slight sense of regret. We don’t quite know what he’s regretting yet, but there’s something that in his life has been tinged.
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Q. JG frequently does bad things but feels conflicted about it and doesn’t quite know why he can’t stop himself.
He is confused where this is all coming from. But it’s part of the maturation process.
He’s toying with his own sense of agency. He loves his friends but can’t help wanting to have something over them, some control and power, especially given all the other times where he has none. Kids who get bullied are always looking for a sense of security and control.
I wanted to capture how he’s someone who is formed by what happens to him, but also that there are some parts of him that are already there. JG is doing the darndest he can to control himself and the badness inside him because he knows what goodness is and he wants to be good. He’s sensitive to goodness in others and hoping it rubs off on him.
But there are parts of JG that are inviolable and original, that nothing can change. They just may be brought out by events. Life informs us, but it also reveals us.
Q. During all JG’s troubles, the narrator drops a few clues that let us know he turns out OK. Was that release valve important for the reader?
In my thought experiments about where the story would go, I briefly wondered, “Is he telling this from jail?” But that would be too easy, too expected. I knew the reader would, as I was as a writer, be curious about where this guy landed. I didn’t want to show anything of his future life, except the fact that he was pretty much OK.
Q. JG and a friend stumble upon camp counselors having sex, which baffles him. Just afterward in the text, the narrator uses the word “rusticated,” creating a kind of distance from the boy’s point of view. How conscious are you of those choices?
I always test every word, but especially for this book and this delicate dance between JG the boy and JG the narrator. I thought about that word a lot — it suggests something about where he went afterwards; maybe he went to a nice school. It’s a little peek into the future and his present culture and standing. I’m not going to give you everything about his future, but he is a guy who will use the word rusticated.
Q. You really capture being that age in that era, when there was much less supervision than there is now. Were you and your friends into doing the jumps with your bikes, like Evel Knievel?
I don’t know why that didn’t get into the book, because that was one of the things that I do remember really vividly. One kid tried to jump a shopping cart. You’d build a ramp for the jump, but there’s no ramp to land on. So it was just stupid.
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Q. Were there other parts of your life you just couldn’t fit in that you wanted to?
I was always a Yankees fan, and I loved Thurman Munson. I was on the Little League All-Star team, and there was a dinner, and Thurman Munson came and he signed an autograph that I still have. I couldn’t believe he was there. I was at camp when Munson died in a plane crash, and I remember where I was and that the Mets fans taunted me. I wanted to put that in the book, but it was too complicated — it was a different year.
Q. How different would this book have been if you’d written it at 30 or 40?
I was just never that interested in my own life until recently. My daughters are now young women, and it makes you think about your youth. If I had written this book at 30 or 40, I wouldn’t have known how to. I needed that time just to settle into how a life does proceed and how it accrues. I know most writers write a coming-of-age novel when they’re young, but I knew then that I had no idea who I was. Not that I’m so sure now, but at least I’m more willing to look into it.