#cylee

The Flower Drum Song by C. Y. Lee. 1957. 

Author C. Y. Lee passed away on November 8, 2018 at the old age of 102 due to kidney failure. This just recently became known through Lee’s children, who stated at that time they wanted to keep the death private. 

Lee was born in Hunan, China in 1915, into a family where all eight brothers achieved fame. One of his brothers was Li Jinhui, a musician and composer often called the Father of Chinese Popular Music. Lee earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from National Southwestern Associated University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting from Yale University. He emigrated to the U.S. during WWII. 

Among many novels, short stories and plays, Lee’s most famous work is The Flower Drum Song, which is set in San Francisco’s Chinatown and involves a story of generational conflict over an arranged marriage. Though Lee originally struggled to find a publisher, the book has since been recreated into a musical (1958), which became the first Broadway show to feature Asian American Players, and later a movie (1961), too.

Lee is known as one of the few Asian authors that has been able to find commercial success in the United States. According to playwright David Henry Hwang, whom Lee worked with in adapting the musical of Flower Drum Song, Lee not only challenged the then stereotypical role of Asians in media, he also brought different textures into what it meant to be American.