Sara Espinosa

A Morning Story with Yiyun Li

I walked into the room expecting bright colors and piles and piles of books. I expected paintings and posters, or maybe even thought provoking quotes, printed on computer paper, to line the walls. The room would be strange yet interesting to look at, reflecting the tumultuous creativity of its occupant. When I opened the door to Yiyun Lis UC Davis office, I was overwhelmed by its copious amounts of white. All four creamy white walls were untouched, unmarred, and were made more brightenly white by the steady stream of white sunshine that flooded in through the windows. The lone dull grey metal bookcase contained a row and a third of booksthe remaining 4 shelves in the case were empty. How long have you been in this office? Since August. Im sorry this office is huge mess--she laughs. Confused, I scanned the small room again. The only thing I could imagine Yiyun meant by mess were a few sheets of paper that were strewn across a second desk that was placed perpendicular to the desk she was occupyingthe one where her computer was stationed. And thats when I saw it. A huge black and white picture, in an even larger picture frame sitting atop the desk, upright, with its back leaned against the wall. The picture was of an old white man standing outside alone, with a house in the background. Who the old man in the picture was, I was too embarrassed to ask. His importance was palpable. Such a spatially dwarfing portrait of someone had to have some significance especially in a room void of other adornments. ***

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I first met Yiyun when she introduced herself in her short stories class at UCD back in January. She introduced herself as an ex-scientist turned writer and immediately identified her fascination with real life events (stories). Never once, however, did she mention she was a prize winning author of short stories or that her novel of short stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award. She also failed to mention how two of her stories, The Princess of Nebraska and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, were made into films and how her stories have been featured in The New Yorker. She even refrained from mentioning that her latest novel, The Vagrants, was reviewed in The New York Times. No, she did not talk about her achievements. Instead she passed out a short story to analyze with the class. *** When the quarter began, you introduced yourself as a writer but you never mentioned the stories you wrote nor that they had won so many awards! Im really curious--why didnt you mention it? I just never feel like thats something I need to carry with me. Its very interesting, youre a professor you see yourself just as a vehicle almost. You know to just help--to just think about these stories. So I dont know, Ill always feel like my life has nothing to do with my career or my profession in life. My personal lifesurely they intersect but Im trying not to think about their intersection. For me I have so many great stories to teach. My stories really dont matterin the end.

Your stories are being reviewed and critiqued all over the world. Should a writer distance

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themselves from such critiques or from their work? When youre done yes. When your writing the story you should not be distanced. You should be as close a possible. Youre inhabiting all these people-- all your characters-- youre living as them. That is a very sensitive and fragile moment that luckily thats not a moment youre showing your stories to people! People do not read that when you live in these peoples skins. You dont try to distance. The moment you finishits just its a plane. The moment you finish the story, you say, Im done with you guys. Im going to you drop off. Im going to evacuate you from my world. You get these peoples out your system. Thats when you distance yourself from your stories. And how people read your stories, how people react to the stories, I think in the end depend on the readers not the authors. When we have a story in the class, people have different opinions coming from where they come from. So I think the author at that point-- the author should just be moving on to something else.

You say you should distance yourself for the reviews but in a review of The Vagrants in the New York Times, Pico Iyer called the novel: an anthology of horror stories. What do you do? Whats your reaction when you read reviews like that? You laugh! You laugh! Because hes not wrong. There are a lot of horror stories. Theres another review in London I think-- they put my picture up in the newspaper and wrote in big letters Horrors, Horrors right next to my face! I thought, Thank you very much. You laugh, otherwise youd be so sad because theyre not wrong, again, everyone comes from where he comes from. I was sad because he did not recognize how much humor is in that novel. Humor is very hard to be acknowledged especially in a serious book. If you write like Lorrie Moore, people would say -- right away say something about the humor. But youre writing about

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all these executions and political turmoils. And humor is the last thing people will talk about.

And expect? Yes! So theres nothing you can do. I laugh. I want to read the reviews because I laugh. I usually laugh because otherwise you would be disagreeing with your reviewers. You cant have a dialogue with your reviewers just as you cant have a dialogue with your readers. Besides, it doesnt matter. I learn to make fun of all these things.

I came from Mexico to the U.S. when I was three. And sometimes I cant translate a certain word but I want to write it. Oftentimes the translation lurks somewhere in my mind but I cant seem to find it. Do you ever find yourself in the same position when you write your stories, considering your first language is Chinese? I do. I do. I came much later, so I did not grow up in English, I grew up in Chinese. I came in my mid twenties. I think the problem is, if its not your mother tongue, its not your mother tongue. You dont have that intimacy with the language that I think a native speaker would. Native speakers may have morebecause thats the only language. I do suffer all things but in the end theres nothing I can do I can only write in English. I can write in Chinese because I was educated there. But I just do not enjoy writing in Chinese as much as I do in English.

So would you ever right a story in Chinese? No. Never.

When you write a story do you think in Chinese, or do you think in English?

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I think in English. My characters, even though theyre Chinese, they talk to me in English. So their whole dialogues are in English. And then I translate back to Chinese. Lets see, this is too idiomatic American English Im going to make it sound with an accent that people can say yes this is a Chinese character.

A common technique in your work is the employment of adages. Why do you use them? I think thats my effort to make characters more Chinese. We speak in sayings. We quote and fit in a number of people, dead and alive. We always quote people. So in the end, its more like everyday dialogue. And to make my characters sound Chinese I want them to speak Chinese. So sayings are very helpful in that way.

Are they simply a technique? Or are they part of your everyday speech? I think its part of my characters more than its part of me. I dont know if I say a lot of sayings. I probably doonly to my husband because hes Chinese and he understands. But to my children, you know, if I quote all these Asian poetsthey mean nothing to them. My Chinese is stuck in a time that did not evolve with the [passage of] time. I read Chinese Web sites everyday, and [I see] all these new words that I dont understand. --She laughs

The Vagrants highlights a violent moment in Chinas history. NY Times journalist Pico Iyer wrote The Vagrants remind us of all the uncounted, unnamed bodies that lie in the soil only a few feet beneath the latest flood of bright and celebratory billboards proclaiming the achievements of the latest twenty first century Chinese revolution, which shrewdly chooses to dress up its predations in Armani and Calvin Klein. Was illustrating that

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dichotomy intentional? I think mainly, as a writer, youre fascinated by certain things. Im fascinated by people in 1979 because I had a lot of memories. I was six, seven so thats the beginning of your coherent memorywhere it starts. So I was really writing about my memory and my husbands memory. And we combined our memories and made up this world. Which was exactly where we came from. I did not have any big agenda but I know the novel was highly political, highly critical and dark and bleakpeople all say that. I dont know, I was just fascinated by the characters inhabiting that world rather than a bigger message. However people all detect messages, as they will do. Again, its something you dont control. After you finish the book you let it go.

In the movie, The Princess of Nebraska, theres a scene where Sasha is having dinner with her friends Asian American friends. They then begin discussing current issues and events in Asia. But there is a difference between how Sasha, a recent immigrant, sees the events and the friends, who are American but seem to be confident in their knowledge of what Asia is. As an immigrant yourself how do you see this scene? I did not write the scene but I really like it. Because history is forgotten in a way. Im a fiction writer, so its not my job to record history. But Im very aware that in the younger generation in China, they have no interest in history. They want to turn their eyes away from this dark history. Which is normal, which is a very humane reaction when theres something ugly in your family. You dont want to think about it, you try not to think of it. But by turning away your eyes, youre doing a disservice to your own memory and collective memory of the country. I think there is this nationalist kind of surge. Chinas become rich, wealthy and strong so they dont want to dwell upon the past. Which I disagree, apparently, but thatsIm getting old!

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Out of all the stories you have written, which one do you like the most? You know I love stories, recent stories--I like them but they havent been in a book form. You always like your latest stories like you like your youngest child.She laughs Because some of the older storiesI love Extra from the first collection and I love a few stories--but because youre so distanced form the stories in the end, theyre like grown up children. Theyre gone, I dont want to worry about them. I love the memory of writing them more than them, themselves. Thats a horrible thing to say about your stories, right? But I do love the memory of writing those stories.

When you write, do you ever worry about style or are you ever worried that you sound like another writer? I dont, actually. This is the man I really, really love. --She points to the huge portrait of the old man. William Trevor. Hes my hero. All my goal is just to write like him. If I can sound just like him in my stories I would be just--happy. So I dont worry about that because I also just love his writing so much. I think in a way you want to be a writer because you want to write like your favorite author. You want to have a conversationThats the best thing about writing; youre not alone, youre talking to someone.

Since when has Trevor been your hero? I became a writer because of him. I became a writer because I read his fiction--I was just blown

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away. I was thirty when I read his fiction. And all of a sudden I had this grand dream that I wanted to write like him.

How does it feel to be friends with someone you admire so much? Its great. Its really one of the most beautiful things that have ever happened to me. We actually got to meet in person and it also happened that he liked me! That he liked my writing. Imagine if your hero really hated you! What a disaster!

Now theres a short story! I know! Theres a short story! I feel extremely, extremely fortunate to have met him.

I have a bad habit of laughing at death stories-I have that problem too. I mean not just death, about sad thingsI just start laughing.

What made you decide to write the story, Death is Not a Bad Joke If Told Correctly? That story is closer to people I knew than all the other stories because I did write a lot of people I know into that story. So I think that story is the only story that has recognizable characters from my life, or from our family friendsI think thats the only story.

Isnt it hard to write a story thats so close? Its not. I think. For me its all discipline. Once you start writing stories, theyre not real people anymore theyre your characters. You separate them from the real people you know. So its not very hard.

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Do you try to make the characters as different as you can from the real people? I do, yeah. Just to be helpful. Just physical look, physical appearance, you know face, hairall very helpful. Fictionalize as much as you can.

What would you advise writers who are just beginning to write? Read really good authors and try to write like them.

What would you advise to someone who wants to get their work published? I think publishing is only a really small part of a writers life. I think once your work is there, things happen. But the quality, your story, has to be there. And oftentimes I think young people worry about publishing, and less about the quality of their writing.