Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko, was our first Poly Context speaker of 2019, and the event was such a hot ticket that we had to have it in our theater because so many people signed up, we wouldn’t have had room for them anywhere else.

With a very refreshing and unique perspective, Lee spoke about her own experience in an immigrant family from Korea and her hope for what the world might yet become. She then answered questions posed by a panel of Upper School history students and riveted audience members.

Bay Ridge’s local bookseller, The BookMark Shoppe, brought both of Lee’s books to sell,  Free Food for Millionaires—which sold out in a hot minute—and Pachinko, a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Medici Book Club Prize that has been praised by none other than former President Barack Obama, who called it “a powerful story about resilience and compassion.”