Lisa See papers, 1973-2016

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Summary

Creators:
See, Lisa
Abstract:
Lisa See is a best-selling Chinese American writer and a native Angeleno. Her works include historical fiction novels, a memoir of her biracial family's immigration and their role in founding Los Angeles's Chinatown, and mystery thrillers. In addition to manuscripts, publicity, and research, the papers includes correspondence, materials related to several exhibits See curated, appointment books and journals, and awards.
Extent:
45.2 linear feet (97 boxes, 2 oversize boxes, 1 telescope box, 1 oversize map folder, and 1 shoebox) and 6.0 linear feet (6 unprocessed record cartons)
Language:
The bulk of this collection is written in English. There are some newspaper clippings and photocopies of a book in Chinese.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Lisa See papers (Collection Number 564). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Background

Scope and content:

The Lisa See papers range in date from 1973 to 2011, and consist of manuscripts, correspondence, publicity, research, and awards related to the literary career of Lisa See. They also include materials related to See's curatorial work, including museum exhibitions based on her book, On Gold Mountain, as well as appointment books, personal notebooks, and undergraduate coursework.

Biographical / historical:

Lisa See (Lisa See Kendall) was born in 1955 in Paris, France. She is best known for her historical fiction novels about the friendships and romances of Chinese women and Asian American women. She is also known for her memoir of the history of her family in the United States, On Gold Mountain, inspired by many hours she spent as a young girl with her paternal grandparents in Los Angeles' Chinatown. See received her Bachelor of Arts from Loyola Marymount University in 1979 when she began her ongoing work as a freelance journalist. From 1983 to 1996 she was the West Coast correspondent for Publishers Weekly. From 1983 to 1990 she collaborated on books with her mother Carolyn See and John Espey, collectively using the pseudonym Monica Highland. These books were Lotus Land (1983), 110 Shanghai Road (1986), and Greetings from Southern California (1986).

In 1995, St. Martin's Press published the nonfiction account of See's family, On Gold Mountain: the one-hundred-year odyssey of my Chinese-American family, a New York Times Notable Book of 1995. In 1996, On Gold Mountain was republished by Vintage. In 2000, See's opera libretto based on On Gold Mountain was the Los Angeles Opera's Voices of California inaugural production and premiered at the Japan American Theatre followed by the Irvine Barclay Theatre. She also curated several exhibits inspired by On Gold Mountain. She served as guest curator for an exhibit on the Chinese American experience for the Autry National Center (then the Autry Museum of Western Heritage), which also traveled to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 2001. See then helped develop and curate the Family Discovery Gallery at the Autry Museum, an interactive space for children and their families that focused on her biracial, bicultural family as seen through the eyes of her father as a seven-year-old boy living in 1930s Los Angeles. See revisited museum work in 2003 when she curated a retrospective on Tyrus Wong that was the inaugural exhibit for the Chinese American Museum.

In 1997 See began publishing the Red Princess Mysteries thriller series, which includes Flower Net (1997), The Interior (1999), and Dragon Bones (2003). Flower Net was a national bestseller, on the Los Angeles Times Best Books List for 1997, a New York Times Notable Book, and nominated for an Edgar award for best first novel. In 2003 she also wrote the Angels Walk LA Chinatown guidebook to celebrate the opening of the Metro Rail Gold Line Chinatown station.

Her first solo foray into historical fiction, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), became a New York Times bestseller and won numerous awards domestically and internationally. Her books to follow have all been bestselling historical fiction novels focusing on the friendships and romances of Chinese women and Asian American women. These include Peony in Love (2007), Shanghai Girls (2009), Dreams of Joy (2011), and China Dolls (2014).

In addition to her work as a writer, in 1993 See began serving on the Board of Trustees for the University of California Press and is now a trustee emerita. She also served on the Board of Trustees for the Pacific Asia Museum from 2001 to 2002. See currently serves as a Los Angeles City Commissioner on the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Monument Authority. More information on Lisa See can be found on her website at www.lisasee.com.

Acquisition information:
Gift of Lisa See, 2001, 2011.
Processing information:

Processed by UCLA Library Special collections staff, 2006, additions from 2011 were processed by Rebecca Bucher with assistance from Kelly Besser, 2015. The 2011 additions are located in boxes 1, 55, and 66-102.

Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.

We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.

Arrangement:

The papers are arranged in the following series:

  1. Writings by Lisa See
  2. Correspondence
  3. Publicity files
  4. Research files
  5. Exhibition files
  6. Personal files
  7. Awards and memorabilia.

Physical / technical requirements:

CONTAINS UNPROCESSED DIGITAL MATERIALS: Materials are not currently available for access and will require further processing and assessment. If you have questions about this material please email spec-coll@library.ucla.edu.

Physical location:
Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Terms of access:

Property rights to the physical objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Lisa See papers (Collection Number 564). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Location of this collection:
A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
Contact:
(310) 825-4988
AskLSC@library.ucla.edu
Website