In her young adult novels, Finding My Voice, If It Hadn't Been for Yoon Jun, Saying Goodbye, and Necessary Roughness, Marie G. Lee has created a blueprint for what it is like to grow up an outsider in America: the racial taunts, the feeling of otherness, the gestalt and internal disharmony that result from finally discovering that you are "different." Lee, an Asian American, has written out of her own deeply felt experiences growing up in America's heartland, the only Korean in her small hometown. "I write coming-of-age stories of people who, for some reason, feel different than those around them," Lee told Authors and Artists for Young Adults (AAYA) in an interview. For Lee, that "reason" is most often ethnic background. "I didn't have anything like [my books] when I was growing up and wish I did," Lee continued. "I really wish there was a book describing...