Chang-Rae Lee on whether his new novel 'A Tender Age' is autobiographical

Author Chang-Rae Lee has written award-winning novels about many things, corporate espionage, World War II, a global pandemic.

But he's drawn some criticism, or at least notice, for not writing about something close to his own life, growing up as an Asian immigrant child.

Well, now the Korean American Lee has a new book, At Tender Age, a coming-of-age story about a 10-year-old Korean American boy in New York, his trials, his mistakes, his heroes, his girl crushes, and he's here to talk about this.

Chang-Rae Lee, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me on.

I have to say, I so identified with this book about an immigrant kid outside New York City who goes to this Korean church summer camp in the Hudson Valley in the 1970s.

I have to tell you, I grew up in the Hudson Valley in the 1970s.

It's so spot on, and I wanted to ask you, is there some autobiography of you in this novel?

Well, there certainly is.

I suppose you could say structurally it's my youth at that time.

I, I did grow up in Westchester, north of New York City, in a kinda run-down tenement complex.

Mm-hmm.

I did go to Korean church camp.

Um, I did have sets of friends like this.

Uh, so a lot of it really hews to my life.

The stories inside of it, of course, are enhanced-

Sure.

Sure

... changed completely.

[laughs]

[laughs]

And probably if friends saw them, uh, grotesquely [laughs]

Oh.

[laughs]

... revised.