40th Anniversary Retrospective: An Interview with Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li was born in China and came to the U.S. in 1996 to pursue her Ph.D. in immunology, before she began writing nonfiction and then fiction. Her first collection of short stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, came out in 2005 and received the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Guardian First Book Award. Her debut novel, The Vagrants, was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and her most recent collection of stories, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, was a finalist for the Story Prize in 2010. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010, the same year that The New Yorker included her in their “20 Under 40” list. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and The Gettysburg Review, and in 2002 her essay “The Summer of Cicadas” was published in The Journal. Yiyun took some time to talk with Michael Larson, The Journal’s Online Editor, and discuss how that early publication influenced her work.

Michael Larson: Where were you in your career/work when “The Summer of Cicadas” came out? What’s changed since then?

Yiyun Li: I had had my master’s in immunology for two years by then—I worked for a couple years before going back to school. When the essay came out I was about to enter the Nonfiction Writing Program at Iowa. And a year later entered the Writers’ Workshop for a fiction MFA. And now ten years later, I have three books published and the fourth one almost done, plus a children’s book that came out in Italy and many other countries.

ML: “The Summer of Cicadas” is a piece of nonfiction and, being that you are so well known for your fiction now, some of our readers might be surprised to learn that you started out as a nonfiction writer. For you, what is the relationship between nonfiction and fiction? Are they two very different mediums for you? Do you see yourself writing more nonfiction in the future—will there be a Yiyun Li’s Collected Essays?

YL: That is such a good question. Indeed I started as a nonfiction writer, and still read Montaigne on a very regular basis. I don’t think for myself there is a distinction between fiction and nonfiction: both require me to ask questions, and both are written to explore those questions. Once in a while I think about writing more nonfiction, yes, and precisely essays like Montaigne’s, which were more or less his dialogues with the world.

ML: If you could say something to the younger version of yourself who wrote this piece, what would you say? Did you ever expect that your writing would take you the places it has?

YL: The piece was written originally for an undergraduate nonfiction class I took in the evenings while working in immunology, so if I could say something to that self, it would be that everything is there for a reason, and nothing in life goes to waste. I didn’t know where I was going at the time, which might be my good fortune too.

ML: Finally, how does this piece compare to the work you’re currently engaged in? What is keeping you busy these days?

YL: I am working on a contemporary novel. Over the years my interests in history—especially contemporary history—and in justice and injustice, in the complicated reactions people have toward their environment: these haven’t changed much, so I would say I am still working with those themes.

Michael Larson was born and raised on a horse farm in the small town of Rainier, Washington. He earned his B.A. from Dartmouth College, before moving to Mutsu, Japan, where he lived and worked as a middle-school English teacher for two years. He is currently in the Creative Writing MFA Program at The Ohio State University, and serves as online editor for The Journal.