Things in Nature Merely Grow

'There is no good way to say this,' Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.

'There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.'

There is no good way to say this - because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, 'a single point in a timeline'. Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death.

This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving. As Li writes, 'The verb that does not die is to be. Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later, only, now and now and now and now.' Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li's indomitable spirit.

As seen in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, LA Times, TIME, and the Paris Review.

About the Author

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China, and came to the United States in 1996. She is the recipient of several prizes for her writing and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Li’s stories have been published in the New Yorker, the Paris Review and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, USA, with her husband and their two sons.