Juliane Corn Lee was born and raised in Guam. Her Chinese-immigrant grandfather moved to the U.S. territory soon after the Second World War, where he rose to prominence as a businessman and philanthropist. After surviving a stroke and leukemia diagnosis at the age of twenty-six, Lee began writing about her experience; composing, at first, journal entries that evolved into short essays and later resulting in her first book, a memoir. "Thunderclap: A Defining Silence" was published in 2018.