The 14-Year Making of ‘Wednesday’s Child’
originally Published: Sep 8, 2023The acclaimed writer Yiyun Li discusses her new short story collection.
When Yiyun Li moved to the United States in the 1990s to study immunology at the University Iowa, she signed up for a creative writing class or two just to improve her English. Nearly two decades later, with an MFA from the lauded Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Li is now a creative writing professor at Princeton who has published five novels, three short story collections, and a memoir.
Along the way, she’s won prestigious prizes and a dedicated readership, especially among other writers. This year’s short story collection, Wednesday’s Child, follows her 2022 breakout novel, The Book of Goose, which is about two girls crafting macabre stories about their lives in post-World War II France.
Many of the narrators in Wednesday’s Child are women struggling to process the death of a child or a sibling. Others consider the way their lives have changed after intercontinental moves or failed romantic and parental relationships. The stories all coalesce into a beautiful meditation on life and all its nuances. In the acknowledgments, Li notes that this collection was written over the course of 14 years, a period of time when she lost several important figures in her life, including her son, Vincent. “They live among these pages now,” she writes.
From her work, you might assume Li is a somber presence, but chatting with her is a laughter-filled affair. Shondaland sat down with Li to talk about processing grief through writing, humor amidst trauma, uncertainty in parenting, and rereading our favorite books.
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SHELBI POLK: So, this collection was written over the past 14 years and noted several people who were important to you who had passed away over that time. What was the experience of visiting, going back, and revisiting these things?
YIYUN LI: Sometimes you write a collection of stories. This collection, it’s less written than accumulated over 14 years. The earliest story, I think, was written in 2008. I usually work on multiple projects at the same time, a long project and then stories. So, I didn’t think about the collection until we had more than enough stories. It’s interesting to go back. These stories are like my life in the past 14 years, starting at one point and ending where I didn’t expect it to end. I view these stories as placeholders for my life, and the losses over the years, and also the changes. I am not a young writer anymore. I’m solidly middle aged. And 14 years is a big chunk of one’s life. So, revisiting the stories, I think I feel happysad, one word. It is a track of my life. It’s a placeholder of my life. And I do love every story. So, I thought it’s a good collection to put out at this point in my career.
SP: How did you go about arranging these and picking the order when they’re so representative of your life?
YL: The stories were not included in the chronological order as they were written. I think my later work, my stories published in the past three, four years, were very much intertwined with my life. So, I’ve tried to spread them out. There are a lot of losses. But I also thought some of the stories are really funny. I don’t want to bury the humor. So, organizing the stories, it’s more about just making sure the mood is right. But I knew the collection would end on the last story. “All is well, but I cannot tell a lie to my children.” That to me has always been the last line of that collection. And “Wednesday’s Child” was the most recently written story, and I thought it was a good opening.
SP: Related to that last line, one of the consistent themes seemed to be parents wanting to know their children but also being a little scared, not knowing how to connect, and not wanting to find anything unfamiliar, maybe. Can you expand on that struggle?
YL: Sometimes I look at older books. … We don’t know people living in the past, but we read literature written in the past. I feel parents used to be more confident about their parenting than we are these days. I actually think it’s progress for us that we’re less certain about a lot of things. We’re less confident; there’s less of that hard control. You look at earlier literature, children were like puppets. Governesses, nannies, and parents — they run their children’s lives. And I feel at this moment, both from my parenting and from observing contemporary mothers, mostly I do feel that we have made progress. We have made progress by being uncertain, by acknowledging sometimes we don’t know our children, or we cannot know them well. We don’t know them enough to help them. And most parents, we do love our children. But love is such a small thing. It’s a big thing, but it’s also a small thing in bringing up children. So, I think just that awareness of being uncertain has always been in my life, but it has also always been in my thinking of parenting and literature.
SP: That’s a great way to put it. I love that. This wasn’t where I was planning to go next, but I was reading an older piece of yours where you said that men especially have told you to write more about the politics of China, that you need to be more political. That was baffling to me because I feel like these stories were quietly very political, right? The certainty is gone in every aspect of life, and that’s political.
YL: Thank you for saying that, yes!
SP: Especially with how much you’re writing about cultural clashes, displacement, and moving. And women having options. There’s no way that’s not political.
YL: Right. I think sometimes men have this big idea of political with a capital P. You have to write the most dramatic protests or clashes. But I think as you said, it’s in everyday life. Any woman bringing up any child at this moment. At this moment, it’s a political act. But I think I pay attention to more of the everydayness of life. I don’t want to put a label on these everyday activities.
"I think by looking at things directly, for instance, the losses, as you said, the complicated relationships, the misunderstandings — looking at these things straightforwardly, I don’t think that’s a bleak or sad action. That to me is the most hopeful thing.”
SP: That makes sense. Uncertainty, that is unlocking the book for me in a whole new way.
Another thing that was fascinating to me was the quietness of many of your narrators. In pop culture and literature right now, we’re a little obsessed with women who are taking up space and who are loud, which makes sense! But several of your narrators were very self-effacing. They were trying to figure out how to erase themselves, and some of them even liked it. Tell me about focusing on these women inhabiting that space.
YL: Yes, I think that’s exactly right. I think writers certainly pay attention to certain characters, as you said. Some writers are more drawn to the high powered or characters in the spotlight. I like negative space. I like negative space in the world and negative space in characters’ lives. So, I think you’re very apt to point out that many of the women characters are drawn to the negative space for various reasons. One, some characters feel much freer in that space. It’s self-preservation, but it’s also self-development in that negative space. There they can be, well, who they are. I respect my characters. I think what they share is they wanted to have a serious life. They want to think about themselves, or their selves, seriously. But also meditatively, they’re much more drawn to that solitary processing, that space to process.
SP: And we need all of these different lenses through which to look at people and women especially.
YL: Yes, you’re right. Especially as women. If we’re quiet, sometimes we’re pressured to say things. We’re pressured to go out to claim things, or people think of us as passive. These characters, they’re as active and as thoughtful as someone who’s loud, but I want them to be able to make up a space in that quiet moment.
SP: You know, I was struggling to articulate why this collection felt hopeful to me. Because there’s a lot of loss, a lot of relationship issues. But I didn’t leave feeling depressed, which is always nice. Is it the power of reflection here? Is it this focus on human connection?
YL: Such a good question. I remember when I published my first collection, some friends were very concerned and asked, “Is she depressed? The stories are very sad!” And I said no, no, no! Sometimes, people say bleak. My reading never strikes me as bleak. I think by looking at things directly, for instance, the losses, as you said, the complicated relationships, the misunderstandings — looking at these things straightforwardly, I don’t think that’s a bleak or sad action. That to me is the most hopeful thing. You acknowledge the situation rather than looking away. It’s always a hopeful action for me not to look away, if that makes sense. I certainly want the collection to feel hopeful for people as you acknowledge the limit of your human condition, the flawed-ness, the limitation. Not looking away is always helpful.
SP: Another element to the hopefulness is just the basic context that this is a very reflective book. Most of these characters have survived something, and they get to think about it and get to reflect on it.
YL: Yes, some of the losses are quite devastating, I would say. But we live on, and our characters live on. They process these things — that’s the most important thing. When you are hit by the biggest loss, our human instinct is to stop, right? To freeze, to escape as much as possible. But processing or thinking through these things are always good.
SP: And that’s where you get to slip all your humor in.
YL: A lot of the stories actually, when I read them, I made myself laugh. Humor is one of the most useful tools in dealing with a lot of things. I mean, this is not frivolous laughter. In the opening story, the girl already committed suicide. But there was a moment that she said, “You grown-ups treat us as poodles, not even standard poodles, but miniature poodles.” When the girl said that, I felt like that’s exactly the injustice of the world for children. They’re treated as miniature poodles, not even standard poodles.
SP: I was really curious. I saw that you read War and Peace and Moby-Dick every
single year. Why those two and why every year?
YL: I think my reading is mostly rereading. I do read new books for judging something or writing a review, but it’s a lot of rereading. Some books you can read maybe two, three times, and that’s it. Those two novels you can reread forever, and they offer new things every rereading. War and Peace, I think, is really the epitome of realism. It’s really Tolstoy looking at every character as a real person, seeing every single thing. I don’t know if it can be called realism, but it is about many characters, many lives. So, I never get tired rereading, and I always learn new things about Tolstoy as a writer, the characters, and just the general human condition.
And then, Moby-Dick is sort of the opposite. It’s the epitome of metaphor. It’s metaphor after
metaphor after metaphor. It’s poetry. It’s everything. So, I sort of divide my year — half a year Moby-Dick, half a year War and Peace — just to enjoy the words.
SP: I’ve never thought of them as opposing works.
YL: For me, they have to work together. Because if I’m allowed to only read one of them every year, I’ll be a little sad. You know, you sort of long for the opposite of something.
SP: Are your copies just falling apart now?
YL: Very much so. I think I have three copies of War and Peace. They’re just entirely broken down now.
SP: For me, it’s The Brothers Karamazov. I’ve read it every other year.
YL: Oh, my God, that novel! I have to admit, I only read it twice. Both times, I felt I was having a fever. I just felt the whole time I was having this feverish, hallucinating experience that you cannot put into words, right? Maybe I should also add that into my to-read list. It’s a sensational reading experience. It’s physical. It’s everything.
SP: It is! It’s not realism, but every aspect of life that you can think about is there.
YL: That’s exactly right. I love books like that where everything you want to know about life, you can just go read.
SP: You’re making me want to reread War and Peace again, though.
YL: We can trade! I’ll read Brothers Karamazov, and you read War and Peace.
SP: Perfect, I’m in!
Email: shelbi.e.polk@gmail.com
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