BEYOND THE BAMBOO CURTAIN

My name is Dr. Michael Soon Lee, and I am a fifth-generation Chinese American who ancestors survive the 7,000 mile trip from China aboard a rickety old sailing ship in 1855. I am proud an American but ashamed of how minorities are often treated in the United States. I am angry that I've had to sue for rights that most people take for granted. Like many other Asians, I also want to be understood beyond the typecast media images and caricatures that are often known as "chinks" and "gooks".

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This book sheds light on the Asian American experience, mostly absent from history books and media or distorted by negative stereotypes and the myth of the "model minority'. It recounts my search for identity and belonging in the country of my birth where, to whites, I look like a foreigner and I am outcast by Chinese people because I don't speak their language. 

I overcame prejudice, systemic discrimination, and depression to become a TV and film producer, and actor, a top-producing real estate broker, and the Dean of a university business school. I was the first Asian to earn the "Certified Speaking Professional" designation who has spoken over one thousand times around the world to companies like Coca-Cola, General Motors and Boeing. 

It is my hope that my story will help readers to understand Asian Americans as people who are much more similar than different from others in this country. In doing so, maybe we can reduce the violence that has been increasingly  aimed at Asians in recent years because we are not inscrutable or unknowable. Only then, by working together we can help each other achieve our hopes and dreams.