Edina Natives, Writers Reflect on Spelling Bees

For some families, spelling bees can be deadly serious business.

That’s how it was for poet Jenna Le, whose Vietnamese immigrant parents settled in Edina. Le’s older sister, Mina, discovered she was a spelling wiz, and that caused the family to put extra importance on spelling bees—even if Le wasn’t always so enamored of them.

Le eventually was one of the top five finishers in the state during the 1998 Minnesota State Spelling Bee. She sat down with author Laura Goode, a fellow Edina native and spelling bee contestant, to talk about what the competitions mean—and their relationship to “race, class, gender, competition, achievement, and the American Dream.”

Click here to read the full interview on The Millions.