While he was in prison, Chol Soo Lee wrote his first poem, “Thinking of Home.” For Chol Soo, home was his motherland, Korea, a country he left against his own will at the age of twelve. This separation marked one of many severed ties in his life. Over time, he even lost the ability to speak Korean and communicate with his family who had raised him in Korea.

As a child, Chol Soo endured abandonment and family separation, and, later, isolation in his adopted country. Upon arrival, his race, class, and immigrant identities made him an easy target of the US’s school-to-prison pipeline. The traumas of war and migration had a profound impact on his life. This module is about the early life of Chol Soo Lee before his name became a rallying cry for a landmark social movement.