After losing her sons, Yiyun Li learned to βsuffer betterβ
Keeps playing with the screen off. The episode is played from Fresh Airβs own podcast host.
Liβs 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. Her new novel is about two piano prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Itβs called Music Against the Night. She spoke with Terry Gross about the βabyssβ of sadness, finding comfort in piano and writing.Β
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