Yiyun Li Confronts Profound Loss in Her Poignant Memoir

Near the conclusion of her new memoir, "Things in Nature Merely Grow," novelist Yiyun Li states, "Sometimes life offers no silver lining." The book is a poised, somewhat detached reflection on the suicide of her son James at 19 in 2024, following the earlier suicide of his elder brother Vincent at 16, six years prior. Li rejects the comforting platitudes offered to those grieving, saying, "Some consolations serve only those who offer them. Please keep your silver linings; I must decline."

Raised in Beijing and originally trained as a mathematician, Li began her acclaimed literary career writing in English after relocating to the United States in 1996. Challenging the cultural tendency to soften death with euphemisms like "passed away," she resists the easy sympathies and clichés surrounding grief. She writes, "People often ask me where I am in the grieving process, and I wonder if they truly understand what it means to lose someone."

Instead of seeking solace, Li embraces what she calls "radical acceptance," a recognition of living condemned to an "abyss" following her sons’ deaths. Despite this, she persists in engaging with everyday routines—rising at the usual hour, brewing quality coffee, reading works by Euclid, Shakespeare, Henry James, and Wallace Stevens—and continuing to write.

This memoir follows her earlier work, "Where Reasons End" (2019), a novelistic memoir portraying Vincent as "Nikolai," an ardent supporter of the Oxford comma, baker, knitter, admirer of 17th-century poet George Herbert, and a clarinet-hating oboist. Both books feature unadorned, restrained prose that reflects on the imprecision of language—"One can never take words for granted; one cannot always trust words"—while confronting the harsh reality of her sons’ suicides.

James, like his brother and closest companion Vincent, was a remarkable prodigy. He read fluently as a toddler, taught himself Welsh among other languages, and devoured the Encyclopedia of the Human Body to understand human sexuality at a very young age. While Li briefly notes her sons’ "sensitivity and peculiarity," she portrays them primarily as children of extraordinary intellect and wit, marked by sharp humor and philosophical musings.