Min Jin Lee’s second novel, Pachinko, was published in 2017, but she first conceived the story while still a student at Yale University, from which she graduated with a history degree in 1990. At Yale she attended a talk by a missionary visiting from Japan who had worked with that country’s Zainichi community (ethnic Koreans born in Japan but not having Japanese citizenship). Lee started writing her first draft of a novel about this community in 1996 but abandoned the manuscript. From 2007 to 2011 Lee and her family lived in Japan for her husband’s work. There she interviewed Japanese Koreans, prompting the realization that she needed to rewrite her novel to better capture the Zainichi community’s story. Pachinko was a best-seller when it was released and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
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