Writer Yiyun Li lost both of her sons. When words fell short, she turned to music

Yiyun Li won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2025 memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow. Hannah Yoon/Macmillan hide caption

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

Writer Yiyun Li does not talk about "grief" or the "grieving process." To her, those words make it sound that at some point you emerge from grief. Instead, Li prefers to use the word "abyss," which, she says, is where she expects to be for the remainder of her life.

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.

"James' death taught me to suffer better," she says. "To say, 'I can do it, and I can live with my pain and sorrow without ever wanting to stop feeling.'"

Li's new novel, Music Against the Night, is set in the late 1700s and early 1800s and centers on two prodigies who are brought together by music, and drawn apart because of their aspirations. The novel focuses on music, which sits outside of words.

"I think I've had the feeling both times after my children's death that words often fall short, and falling short doesn't mean not succeeding, falling short doesn't mean failing," she says. "But when I start a new project, I would like a subject [where] words naturally fall short. So music is that choice."

Li grew up in China and served a year in the Chinese military before coming to the U.S. to study immunology. She eventually left her Ph.D. program to become a writer. Li is now a professor in the creative writing program at Princeton University.