From girl geniuses to misfits, USC alum Lisa Yee returns to campus
The author talks about her decades-long career.
By DAVID RENDON
It might seem odd to learn that one of the most well-respected children’s authors — a recipient of the Newbery Honor and a National Book Award Finalist — went to USC intending to go to law school and didn’t publish a book until her 40s. But this is the case for Lisa Yee.
Yee’s path to reaching her levels of acclaim was a long road that began when she enrolled in creative writing classes at USC. These classes were a first for Yee; she had never been given the opportunity to take any writing classes before that point. It was through those classes that she realized that she didn’t want to pursue a career in law, she said, but instead in writing.
Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.
“The writing workshops were very small, and so it was scary at first, because you sit around and you read your work, and work is very personal,” Yee said. “You’re opening yourself up. But we all survived, and so I knew, ‘Okay, I think I could do this, and it won’t kill me.’”
After graduating in 1981, Yee didn’t go directly into the publishing world; instead, she worked in product development, writing for radio and television, advertising, and even as a writer and producer for Disney World. She then opened a creative services company, Magic Pencil Studios, but it still wasn’t quite what she wanted.
“At that time, I had two young children, and I was always telling them, if there’s a hope or a dream, or if there’s something you really want, you owe it to yourself to try,” Yee said. “I realized that I was such a huge hypocrite, because I had this dream from when I was a kid about being an author, and I wasn’t trying.”
From that point on, she started working on her books while everyone in the house was asleep, slowly working and learning what it meant to be an author. At this point, Yee had no agent or any connections to the industry, so she was incredibly surprised when, after sending a synopsis and outline of her novel to a publisher, Arthur A. Levine Books, she got back a positive response.
“I love this. Send me the whole novel,” Yee recalled the publisher saying.
But she hadn’t even written it yet; building up that book — “Millicent Min, Girl Genius” — from the initial synopsis would take her the next six years.
“When it finally came out, I was in shock,” Yee said. “I thought I had tricked him. I had tricked this guy into publishing a book, and that was going to be it.”
Luckily, Yee didn’t remain agentless for long: After “Millicent Min, Girl Genius” hit the shelves, she found Jodi Reamer, a literary agent at Writers House.
“I came up to [Los Angeles], and Lisa was up for — I think it was — the Sid Fleischman Humor Award,” Reamer said. “We had met at various conferences, and then we really bonded at that L.A. one where she won the award. … We decided to work together, and we started, and we’ve been together ever since, and it’s been really fabulous.”
It’s now been 21 years since Yee’s first book was published, and in that time, she has worked on countless novels, including books for American Girl and DC Comics. She’s learned many new skills through writing the various genres and books under her belt, Yee said. She’s received ninja lessons in Japan, taken private investigator courses, learned to surf and even done research in the Amazon Rainforest.
“Writing these books has been the best job ever,” Yee said. “The excuse to research and just do things and go to places that a person like me normally wouldn’t do — it’s amazing and so much fun.”
Yee cemented herself as a trail-blazing author in the middle-grade field, often by writing about her own culture. When “Millicent Min, Girl Genius” came out, it was the first time in mainstream publishing, Yee said, that there was a photo of a realistic and contemporary Asian American child on a book cover.
“What I didn’t know at the time was that it was groundbreaking,” Yee said. “I had no idea. I just wrote a book about a girl who was lonely. And I didn’t know that there were little books like that about Asian American kids.”
Yee didn’t set out to be a trailblazer; she was just writing what she knew. All her characters are based on her own experiences and the experiences of people she knows. She never expected “Millicent Min, Girl Genius” to have the impact it did.
“I was just writing about kids whose race was part of the fabric of the story; it wasn’t the focus of the story,” Yee said. “I think it resonated with a lot of people, and now that the books have been out for so long, a lot of adults will come up to me and say, ‘This is the first time I saw myself in a book when I was a kid — when I read one of yours,’ and sometimes they’ll start crying, and then I’ll start crying.”
The impact Yee achieved has been increasingly noticeable, said Shana Corey, Yee’s editor. Corey said she’s seen many Asian American authors cite Yee as their inspiration to start writing. When Yee attended a banquet for the John Newbery Honor last year, author Christina Soontornvat dedicated her speech to Yee.
“Her entire speech, which could have been about her … was about Lisa, one of the other honorees, about how inspiring Lisa was to her,” Corey said. “It’s amazing, she really changed children’s literature.”
When Yee began, she was one of the most successful Asian American authors, Reamer said, and one of the most widely adored.
“Everybody loves Lisa,” Reamer said. “When she got the National Book Award honor … everyone was so happy for her. I’ve never seen the entire author community completely happy with one person getting an award. Everybody just knows she deserves it.”
While Yee has helped advance children’s literature in terms of representation, she knows there’s still a long way to go, and she believes that there is room for everybody — that there needs to be more inclusion and less exclusion.
“When ‘Millicent Min’ first came out, I remember somebody saying to me, ‘Well, the book would probably sell more if they didn’t have a Chinese kid on the cover,’” Yee said. “I think that kids are so much smarter than people give them credit for, and if the story is good, if a kid can identify with a character, it doesn’t matter — their race, religion, sexual orientation, any of that. They’re gonna identify with the character first.”
If a student is interested in writing books, Yee encourages them to pursue it. The biggest obstacle people face when getting started is themselves, Yee said. Her advice: Just start.
“Don’t wait like I did,” Yee said. “I waited till I was older, and I had kids and a family. I waited until I was unhappy with my job to really take writing books seriously. Don’t wait till you’re unhappy.”
Yee is returning to USC, 43 years after graduating, to attend the L.A. Times Festival of Books. She will speak at “The Royal ‘We’: Magic Schools and Royal Societies in Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction” about her latest book “The Misfits,” from 2-3 p.m. at Taper Hall on Sunday — tickets required.
“You guys should be really proud of her as an alum,” Reamer said. “She did your school proud, and you couldn’t ask for a better person. She’s not just talented but also a phenomenal person, and in an ideal world, that’s what you want. We’re lucky to have her.”
