Yiyun Li

Today I awoke eager to read more of the [a:Yiyun Li|148348|Yiyun Li|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243545452p2/148348.jpg] memoir, [b:Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life|30211990|Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life|Yiyun Li|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1471277778s/30211990.jpg|50666145]. Pondering her life and rich literary history, her teachers, her mentors, the books she wrote and read that mattered to her, she also circles back to her two suicide attempts and experience with depression. She talks of memory and time. as well as transitions ordered by a new language. Born in China which she left to go to college in Iowa, she writes in English. This is another moving memoir expanding my to-read list by a dozen or more titles. During the time she is unwell, she focuses on journals and letters: Tolstoy, Turgenev, Stefan Zweig, William Trevor, Katherine Mansfield. A cover blurb from Mary Gaitskill says it perfectly: "A must read for anyone trying to stay sane in a world that might be perceived as insane."… (more)

The Vagrants is the story of a small village in China, in 1979, shortly after the cultural revolution. It's the story specifically of a few characters, all wrapped up in one way or another in an attempted rebellion. The book begins with the execution of an enemy of the state, someone who was brutally put to death, after years of imprisonment, because she dared write something against the government. The people of this sleepy little town, after hearing about the Democratic Wall Movement are inspired to speak up about the conditions they live under, knowing that going against the omnipresent government could result in death.

We follow a mouthpiece for the government who begins to question the iron arm of communism; a small, lonely child who just moved to town and is just trying to survive with his dog; a 12 year old girl, deformed from birth, and hated and abused by her parents; a very strange 17 year old boy living with his grandmother, surviving on money the government gives to surviving members of heroes; an older couple whose daughter is the aforementioned counter-revolutionary. The husband a cranky school teacher who just wants to be left alone, the wife slowly realizing that authoritarianism isn't all it's cracked up to be; and another older couple, nomads who have lost multiple adopted daughters because the state capriciously decided they would be better off with other adults. Li brings all of these people to life, diving deep into their thoughts and lives, making them real, in only 300+ pages.

I imagine this book would have been even better and more fulfilling if I had additional knowledge about the history of China. I know the country has been ruled by a serious of viscous communist governments, but don't really know about who led when and what order events happened in. Still, even if I knew less, I can't imagine reading this wouldn't have at least been entertaining.… (more)