SOURCE: Muske, Carol. “Sons, Lovers, Immigrant Souls.” New York Times Book Review 96 (27 January 1991): 20-21.

In the following excerpt, Muske comments on the various literary traditions that inform The City in Which I Love You.

The 1990 Lamont Selection is The City in Which I Love You by Li-Young Lee, who was born in Jakarta. In the 1950's, his father was a political prisoner for a time. The family fled Indonesia and Mr. Lee traveled through Hong Kong, Macau and Japan before coming to the United States when the poet was a child. His poems are explosive and earthy, and in “The City in Which I Love You” he has come into his own:

He gossips like my grandmother, this man with my face, and I could stand amused all afternoon in the Hon Kee Grocery, amid hanging meats he chops: roast pork cut from a hog hung by the...