I think their pasts are treated with a voice that sees their role as those of innocents. That's reflected in the past time sequences. They're less "written."
Chang-Rae LeeI want the flashbacks to feel that once you're there they have their own unity, their own kind of atmospheric sensibility; I want the reader to be transported. The novel is a big, complicated, unknowable thing before it's written.
Chang-Rae LeeAs for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.
Chang-Rae LeeObviously loss of family is huge and critical, but I think really it's more about losing a sense of family. The horror of that kind of incompleteness. Writing this book, I tried not to think about my father, which does no one any good fictionally. I did try to imagine not just the horror of that moment, but the horror of having witnessed it, and the lifelong void. And I think that's what's so frightening.
Chang-Rae Lee