Upper Midwest Literary Archives: https://libnews.umn.edu/2026/03/creating-poetry-and-community-women-writers-in-umn-libraries-archives/
“Lee is a poet, essayist, memoirist, and visual artist, who grew up in South Minneapolis in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Her father was Chinese, and her mother was Black. But Lee and her mother were white-passing. For most of her life, her Black family was hidden from her.”
“I knew I could be Chinese if I needed to, if I was pressured, according to Mom, but I could not tell anyone I was Black,” Lee wrote for UMLA. Her poetry collection “Chinese Blackbird,” published in 2002, is a moving reflection on her mixed-race heritage, class, gender, and sexuality.
“Her writing is very raw and very, very vulnerable and passionate,” McBrien said. “Culture and ethnicity, what you’re raised as, what you’re viewed as, and how you feel, how do all these things intersect?”
https://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/16/resources/11877
