Yiyun Li tells the story of two prodigies in 'Music Against the Night' : NPR
NPR • • entertainment
Key Points:
- Writer Yiyun Li, who lost both her teenage sons to suicide six years apart, describes grief as an "abyss" she expects to live in indefinitely, rather than a process with an endpoint.
- Li's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, details her experience with loss and her determination to endure pain without wanting to escape it.
- Her new novel, Music Against the Night, set in the late 1700s and early 1800s, explores themes of music and aspiration, reflecting her belief that words often fall short in expressing deep emotions.
- Li began piano lessons shortly before her younger son James died, finding music a way to engage with time and the world amid her grief, despite feeling intimidated by her own limitations.
- Raised in China with a strong sense of curiosity and questioning authority, Li left a Ph.D. program in immunology to pursue writing and now teaches creative writing at Princeton University.
