Writer Yiyun Li lost both of her sons. When words fell short, she turned to music

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Writer Yiyun Li does not talk about "grief" or the "grieving process." To her, those words make it sound that at some point you emerge from grief. Instead, Li prefers to use the word "abyss," which, she says, is where she expects to be for the remainder of her life.

Li's teenage sons both died by suicide six years apart, Vincent in 2017 at age 16, and James in 2024 at age 19. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2025 memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, chronicled the loss of her sons and her effort to go on.

"James' death taught me to suffer better," she says. "To say, 'I can do it, and I can live with my pain and sorrow without ever wanting to stop feeling.'"

Li's new novel, Music Against the Night, is set in the late 1700s and early 1800s and centers on two prodigies who are brought together by music, and drawn apart because of their aspirations. The novel focuses on music, which sits outside of words.

"I think I've had the feeling both times after my children's death that words often fall short, and falling short doesn't mean not succeeding, falling short doesn't mean failing," she says. "But when I start a new project, I would like a subject [where] words naturally fall short. So music is that choice."

Li grew up in China and served a year in the Chinese military before coming to the U.S. to study immunology. She eventually left her Ph.D. program to become a writer. Li is now a professor in the creative writing program at Princeton University.

Interview highlights

On the decision to set Music Against the Night in a different time period

I was in the middle of the novel when James died. This is a novel far from my usual interests or concerns, and the reason I think I went back to history is I would like to live again through history, through historical figures, through my characters living in the late 18th and early 19th century. ... I'm making the past into a new now for myself and possibly for my readers.

On how playing piano connects to her grief

I began my piano lessons at the end of 2023, purely to get to know how to play the piano. And James died in February 2024, so two months into my piano lessons he died, and it occurred to me that piano or music is a good way for me to count time — because music is about time. It's about counting the measure, counting the rhythm. And also music is about ... be[ing] engaged with something else. You can sit in your sadness all day long, do nothing, or crying. Or, like me, I could just sit there and just play the same drill again, and again, as a way to know I was, in a way, staying in touch with the world. ...

I'm not a concert pianist, but somehow I find it liberating and healthy to do something that you absolutely love but cannot do well. Every time I go to my piano lesson, I'm so intimidated. I'm sweating because I just can't do it. I can hear other people do it, I cannot do it myself. But I think that's, again, acknowledging the limit of my capacity.

On raising two gifted children

Both my children could be called prodigies, but James, my younger son, especially was extraordinarily odd and brilliant. ... We were greatly baffled. I remember he was 5 or 6, he said, "Mommy, you will never see the world. I see it full of dots and squiggly lines." And that again was a strange perception of the world [that] we adults did not have access to. …

What is the responsibility or the difficulty of bringing up a child [who is] very brilliant? … Some people would say, well, you really have to train him to be the next Einstein, but we did not want him to be the next Einstein, we want him to be a normal, happy boy living in an ordinary life.

On her son Vincent 

He was a brilliant painter and we still have all his paintings around the house. He was an oboist and when he wanted to learn the oboe, the oboe teacher said he was a bit young, because he was 8 when he want to learn oboe, but he was certain. ... [He had] started on the piano and he could articulate that piano was not his instrument. He wanted to play the oboe. But mostly, he wrote beautiful poetry. He was a great poet. And he was a greater reader. I wouldn't call him an outlier, as James was, but he was brilliant and fun and interesting.

On struggling with suicidal ideation

Sometimes I think people have all sort of thoughts about or against people who have chosen suicide, and people who've chosen or attempted suicide are often called selfish. But my experience is oftentimes people [are] in great pain, whether it's great mental pain or great physical pain. And sometimes people in deep depression cannot tell the difference between mental pain and physical pain, because everything together is a great kind of suffering. I think it's not that people who experience that kind of suicidal urge, it's not that they want to die or they want [to] use this to hurt other people.

On becoming a writer

I was born with innate curiosity and also sensitivity to things that did not quite make sense. So I grew up in China. And for instance, when I was little, all the adults would say, since you're a child, you have no right to decide who you want to be or what you want to do. And my mother even had a saying, something along the [lines] that an adult decides and the child follows. I was quite young, you know, 4 or 5. I just couldn't make sense of all of these teachings because I thought I was as capable of thinking as the adults, and why did I have to follow them? So I think that sort of sensitivity to things that are very, very nonsensical, I think maybe that's one thing that made me into a writer.

Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.