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A review by kxiong5
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
4.5
Because of its simplicity, Yiyun Li's prose has no way of hiding things. Which is to say, she will tell the truth so cleanly, and so brutally in that cleanness, that there's nowhere to dodge. She says it over and over again. It works in this memoir because that must be what life is after losing a child -- there is no 'grieving and then it's over'; she will always be a mother who lost two sons.
The social world does not always have defined places for mothers who have lost their children, and live on long past accepted 'grieving periods' as mothers who have lost their children. Still Li is here. She takes therapeutic practices and coping mechanisms (the phrase belies its seriousness) and other practicalities of living after death in the family seriously, without the smarmy irony that so many writers tend to do and without romanticizing her and her family's suffering. Though in some way writing seriously and beautifully about death, especially death by suicide, especially death by suicide in a literary landscape that has the Romantics and classical tragedy in it and that encourages our existing relationship of love and awe for those who suffer (usually beautifully, in literature -- and though Li doesn't try to parse their exact experience of suffering, she certainly dwells on her sons at their most beautiful and has found elegant ways of understanding why they might not have made it to adulthood) -- to some extent this will always be received as romanticizing suffering. It's not an easy line to walk.
It's also not the point of this exercise. The fact is that Li lost her children and is still alive, and whether or not her experience thereof fulfills anyone's expectations of beauty or moral responsibility or whatever other things could get flung at the surface of her life does not change the fact of that loss and all the things she has to live with because of it.
What I find most astonishing about this book is the depth of respect Li has for her children -- so much so that she won't even take photos of James at his high school graduation without consent. She takes them so seriously, perhaps even more seriously than they may have taken themselves at times. (Maybe that's what an author has to do: take people at their word.) So much so that she recognizes how she does not know them and will never know them, in so many specific ways. She can know how they expressed themselves to her, and by all accounts they must have been remarkably open to her even with that limit of mutual understanding in place. The selves they showed her, that she sets to the page, were vibrant, wildly intelligent people with very different ways of being in the world. Above all she respects their choices as individuals fully separate from her even with her love and worry for them holding them close.
It's not possible to be sure whether her understanding of why her children chose suicide more closely reflects her worldview or that of her children, who she describes as not seeing a future in which the world could meet him in his love for beauty (Vincent) and as having entered the twilight of his life early, realizing there was nothing more to want from the world that had left him alone (James). I think it's a natural impulse to want to argue with the dead, hoping they might know more than us. I found myself arguing with the James whose life Li presents because I have read the same books and asked the same questions (who doesn't?), which then means arguing with Li’s characterizations of her own sons, and their perspectives on suffering and life and the conclusions they reached. This is not the point of this exercise. None of it changes the facts of their deaths.
One wishes to do battle with the things one fears succumbing to, which is something Li points out herself. We’re so harsh to the people who walk the edge of death as if it is somehow by choice. We hate to see in others what we fear about ourselves.
The other remarkable thing is, alongside her acknowledgement of the gulf of understanding between herself and her children is this book's recognition of what happens when, for just a moment, someone reaches across that unbridgeable gap and says the exact right thing, the courageous thing, and for a moment in the valley of loneliness (that which Vincent and James both saw and turned away from) there is someone who understands.
Overall, this is a book that doesn't moralize or pretend to be able to help anyone or see beyond the truth of one family and their lives, and I hope no one reading assumes the posture of waiting to receive help or assuming that that's what this book 'should' do (there is no 'should' about death, I think). Li's life is. Li's writing is. Li's children are and will always be hers. I think if it helps anyone, it will be because they've seen across the abyss to someone else who lives there, and it is helpful sometimes to know that other people are walking a similar parallel path through life.
The social world does not always have defined places for mothers who have lost their children, and live on long past accepted 'grieving periods' as mothers who have lost their children. Still Li is here. She takes therapeutic practices and coping mechanisms (the phrase belies its seriousness) and other practicalities of living after death in the family seriously, without the smarmy irony that so many writers tend to do and without romanticizing her and her family's suffering. Though in some way writing seriously and beautifully about death, especially death by suicide, especially death by suicide in a literary landscape that has the Romantics and classical tragedy in it and that encourages our existing relationship of love and awe for those who suffer (usually beautifully, in literature -- and though Li doesn't try to parse their exact experience of suffering, she certainly dwells on her sons at their most beautiful and has found elegant ways of understanding why they might not have made it to adulthood) -- to some extent this will always be received as romanticizing suffering. It's not an easy line to walk.
It's also not the point of this exercise. The fact is that Li lost her children and is still alive, and whether or not her experience thereof fulfills anyone's expectations of beauty or moral responsibility or whatever other things could get flung at the surface of her life does not change the fact of that loss and all the things she has to live with because of it.
What I find most astonishing about this book is the depth of respect Li has for her children -- so much so that she won't even take photos of James at his high school graduation without consent. She takes them so seriously, perhaps even more seriously than they may have taken themselves at times. (Maybe that's what an author has to do: take people at their word.) So much so that she recognizes how she does not know them and will never know them, in so many specific ways. She can know how they expressed themselves to her, and by all accounts they must have been remarkably open to her even with that limit of mutual understanding in place. The selves they showed her, that she sets to the page, were vibrant, wildly intelligent people with very different ways of being in the world. Above all she respects their choices as individuals fully separate from her even with her love and worry for them holding them close.
It's not possible to be sure whether her understanding of why her children chose suicide more closely reflects her worldview or that of her children, who she describes as not seeing a future in which the world could meet him in his love for beauty (Vincent) and as having entered the twilight of his life early, realizing there was nothing more to want from the world that had left him alone (James). I think it's a natural impulse to want to argue with the dead, hoping they might know more than us. I found myself arguing with the James whose life Li presents because I have read the same books and asked the same questions (who doesn't?), which then means arguing with Li’s characterizations of her own sons, and their perspectives on suffering and life and the conclusions they reached. This is not the point of this exercise. None of it changes the facts of their deaths.
One wishes to do battle with the things one fears succumbing to, which is something Li points out herself. We’re so harsh to the people who walk the edge of death as if it is somehow by choice. We hate to see in others what we fear about ourselves.
The other remarkable thing is, alongside her acknowledgement of the gulf of understanding between herself and her children is this book's recognition of what happens when, for just a moment, someone reaches across that unbridgeable gap and says the exact right thing, the courageous thing, and for a moment in the valley of loneliness (that which Vincent and James both saw and turned away from) there is someone who understands.
Overall, this is a book that doesn't moralize or pretend to be able to help anyone or see beyond the truth of one family and their lives, and I hope no one reading assumes the posture of waiting to receive help or assuming that that's what this book 'should' do (there is no 'should' about death, I think). Li's life is. Li's writing is. Li's children are and will always be hers. I think if it helps anyone, it will be because they've seen across the abyss to someone else who lives there, and it is helpful sometimes to know that other people are walking a similar parallel path through life.