About Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America
Julia Lee is angry. And she has questions.
What does it mean to be Asian in America? What does it look like to be an ally or an accomplice? How can we shatter the structures of white supremacy that fuel racial stratification?
When Julia was fifteen, her hometown went up in smoke during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The daughter of Korean immigrant store owners in a predominantly Black neighborhood, Julia was taught to be grateful for the privilege afforded to her. However, the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, following the murder of Latasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper, forced Julia to question her racial identity and complicity. She was neither Black nor white. So who was she?
This question would follow Julia for years to come, resurfacing as she traded in her tumultuous childhood for the white upper echelon of elite academia. It was only when she began a PhD in English that she found answers―not through studying Victorian literature, as Julia had planned, but rather in the brilliant prose of writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. Their works gave Julia the vocabulary and, more important, the permission to critically examine her own tortured position as an Asian American, setting off a powerful journey of racial reckoning, atonement, and self-discovery.
With prose by turns scathing and heart-wrenching, Julia lays bare the complex disorientation and shame that stem from this country’s imposed racial hierarchy. And she argues that Asian Americans must work toward lasting social change alongside Black and brown communities in order to combat the scarcity culture of white supremacy through abundance and joy. In this passionate, no-holds-barred memoir, Julia interrogates her own experiences of marginality and resistance, and ultimately asks what may be the biggest question of all―what can we do?
- Complete Title: Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America
- Format: Hardcover
- Language: English
- Number of Pages: 248
- Publication Time: April 18, 2023
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
- ISBN: 1250824672
- ISBN13: 9781250824677
About Julia Lee
Julia Lee
Reviews Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America
A great memoir that interrogates Asian Americans’ racial positionality in the United States, by a Korean American woman born in Los Angeles, who later attends Princeton for undergrad and Harvard for…
Thomas
I was quite young during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t learn about the event until Anthony Bourdain visited Koreatown. I’m sure Korean Americans look back on this area nowada…
Mai
This was fantastic. The rage was there. The knowledge was there. Smart and sharp. Tone spot on. Content spot on. The essay in the 92 LA riots was *chefs kiss*…
Traci Thomas
Julia Lee is such a great writer. I really enjoyed her life story. I couldn’t put this book down as soon as I read the first page. Lee’s fight is ultimately against oppressive systems of power (as m…
Lydia Wallace
“Justice isn’t BIPOC folks feuding with one another for a small piece of pie. It’s realizing that we all deserve more of the whole damn pie.” In Biting the Hand, Julia Lee uses her memoir as way to no…
Christina | readingthroughatlanta
“To live as a minoritized, nonwhite person in this country is to exist in a perpetual state of shame.” BITING THE HAND is a memoir of Julia Lee. Being a daughter of Korean immigrants and born in Amer…
Elena L.
Warning, this one is going to be long so I’m just going to jump right into it.Written in three parts, in BITING THE HAND Lee breaks down and examines her identity of being Korean American growing up…
Helen | readwithneleh
Biting The Hand is a blend of memoir and examination on race in America. As a Korean American woman who was raised by immigrant parents in Los Angeles she has her own perspective on how the U.S. has t…
The Reading Raccoon
As an Asian American woman similar in age to author Julia Lee, reading this book felt strangely cathartic. There’s a lot packed into this deceptively short work, as it merges the boundaries between me…