Cherylene Lee

Cherylene Alice Lee (June 13, 1953 – March 18, 2016) was an American actress and writer. Lee was born and raised in Los Angeles, and was a fourth-generation Chinese-American. She had two sisters, Priscilla "Puggy" and Virginia. She began a career as a child actress and dancer at age three, and performed in a song and dance team with her sister Virginia in Las Vegas for three summers. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Paleontology and from UCLA with an MS in Geology. She subsequently managed an alternative wastewater treatment plant as a Disney Imagineer. In 1977, she returned to the stage, performing in A Chorus Line. In 1983, she began writing plays, poetry, and fiction. Her plays include The Legacy Codes about the Wen Ho Lee affair and Carry the Tiger to the Mountain about the death of Vincent Chin. In 2015, Lee self-published an autobiography, "Just Like Really": An Uncommon Chinese American Memoir. On March 18, 2016, Lee died in her sleep with her two sisters at her side, after a long battle with breast cancer.