The Gift

Li-Young Lee, the author of “The Gift,” is a Chinese-American poet. “The Gift,” one of Lee’s most anthologized poems, comes from his first poetry collection, Rose, published in 1986. This narrative poem focuses on a memory of Lee’s father triggered when the speaker removes a splinter from his wife’s thumbnail. Central to the poem are themes that recur often in Lee’s other work: the connection between the present and past, memory, and storytelling. Just as the father told the son a story to distract him while removing a metal splinter from his palm, so the son, now an adult, offers the poem as a gift to his wife to distract her from his ministrations. The poem demonstrates Lee’s close attention to detail, meditative tone, and ability to move freely between the past and present.

Poet Biography

Li-Young Lee was born into a prestigious family in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1957. His great-grandfather was the first president of the Republic of China, while his father was personal physician to Mao Zedong. Lee’s father moved the family to Indonesia shortly after his birth, but they left Indonesia in 1959 due to that country’s virulent anti-Chinese attitude, which Lee has discussed in many interviews.