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This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Chang Re Lee read his story, Standings from the May 11th and 18th,

2026 issue of the magazine. Lee is the author of six novels, including Native Speaker,

The Surrendered, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2011, and my

year abroad. His new novel, A Tender Age, from which this story was adapted, will be published in

August. Now here's Chang Rui Lee.

Standings

My given name, Jungungi with a hard G was one that some of the kids in my apartment complex enjoyed deforming.

Chunky, chunky.

As kids do, they were weaponizing a truth, for I was a chunky child, bordering on fat thanks to my

one-a-day habit of a large Snickers bar. My mother would stock boxes of these for me as long as

I ate the food she made, which I happily did. She and I were a tight pair that way, co-conspirators

in a plot to ensure that my whims were

fully indulged as I was her firstborn and her only son.

In the ensuing years I would become uncomfortably aware of the expectation behind that

spoiling, to be number one in my studies, in my sports, even in my citizenship,

such as being elected class president, all of which I wanted very much to realize for her

and lavishly envisioned for myself but could never achieve, given my natural laziness and lack

...