After losing her sons, Yiyun Li learned to ‘suffer better’

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

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. Her new novel is about two piano prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It’s called Music Against the Night. She spoke with Terry Gross about the “abyss” of sadness, finding comfort in piano and writing.

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