“Julia Lee has written a memoir that brims with wit, intelligence, vulnerability, and delicious rage. Biting the Hand is the fiery manifesto of an ‘angry little Asian girl’ that delivers on so many levels. Whip-smart and iconoclastic, Lee takes her readers along on her journey through America and academia, coast to coast, as she grows up and obliterates all the stereotypes into which she has been forced: woman, Korean, American, conformist, and rebel. Sifting through the remnants, a powerful mosaic of her experience emerges in which she fuses and transcends all these identities. Lee’s fight is ultimately against oppressive systems of power (as many as she can smash), but at every turn she presents us with deeply personal stories of her own struggles and epiphanies. Biting the Hand is a perfect distillation of scholarship, lived experience, and revolutionary call for the liberation of all peoples.”

—Phuc Tran, author of Sigh, Gone