Yumi Lee
I teach, research, and write on post-1945 and contemporary U.S. literature with an emphasis on Asian American literature and history, coming from a framework of critical race & ethnic studies. I'm currently working on a book titled Someone Else's War: Race, Empire, and the Korean War in American Literature. The Korean War, long considered the “forgotten war” of twentieth-century U.S. history, has been the subject of a newfound wave of interest in American culture over the past decade. In my book project, I read contemporary American literary works, including novels by Toni Morrison, Chang-Rae Lee, Rolando Hinojosa, and Ha Jin, to trace the transformative effects of the Korean War and U.S. militarism in Asia on U.S. racial formations from midcentury to the present. Examining the war’s impact on policies and practices around desegregation and immigration, I argue that the Korean War heralded a new mode of liberal inclusion for racial minorities in the United States. Thr...