7 Year-Old, Michelle Zhang, Is the Youngest Pulitzer Prize Winner for Writing Chinese Father’s Emails
She is still forced to go to Kumon on Saturdays.
December 28, 2020
By: Julia Zhen
On May 4, 2020, Michelle Zhang was announced as the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize Award in International Reporting for her work in writing her father’s emails, both professional and personal. While this was an unusual choice by The Pulitzer Prize Board, research has shown that it’s a frequent occurrence for the children of immigrants born in the US to write emails for their parents
Michelle’s father, Yu Zhang, explains, “It’s very difficult to learn English at this age and even harder to type out all of our thoughts. We’re doing our best but Michelle is just a natural at writing emails. She’s been doing it ever since she had enough motor function at age 3. She never liked playing roblox that much anyway.”
Yu knew that she was a natural when she started typing away on the computer the first time she put her hands on it. Rumors around the neighborhood say that Michelle had nearly typed out Shakespeare’s entire collection before the laptop battery died.
“We send her to Kumon to help her reading comprehension and grammar, but when it comes to cranking out those emails, she’s a prodigy,” brags Yu. His coworker, Larry Johnson, was even shocked to find out that Yu had a ghostwriter, “All of the emails are so professionally written and easy to read. We had no idea that Michelle was writing them! Although, it makes sense now that a few times Yu signed off his emails with ‘daddy,’ but we just thought it was auto-correct.”
When we asked Michelle for her thoughts on the stunning accolade, she opted to email us instead. Excerpt below:
