Yiyun Li writes after loss: “i still love my sons”
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Yiyun Li, a Chinese-born writer living in the United States, found renewed connection to her son Vincent after reading the phrase “Mother dear” in an old English novel, two months after his suicide in 2017.
The phrase sparked the first chapter of her book Beyond Reason, an imagined conversation with her deceased son. Li believes literature creates a space for exploring memory and connection, a world built solely of words.
Li’s scientific background in biology and immunology informs her writing process, encouraging observation and caution against premature conclusions. She began writing in English after moving to the US in 1996, finding freedom in choosing her own path through language. She resists labels like “Chinese-American writer,” preferring to see herself as an outsider observing the world. Her recent work grapples with the deaths of both her sons, Vincent and James, who died by suicide.
Li prioritizes honoring their individual identities over creating a single narrative of loss, and she believes literature can offer a unique space for connection that transcends time and distance. She received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir for In the Nature of Things, a book exploring grief and the persistence of time.
