“The 14-Year Making of ‘Wednesday’s Child’” - shondaland
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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