Between being and nothingness: Yiyun Li picks acceptance as a way of living

Things In Nature Merely Grow

by Yiyun Li

Published by HarperCollins

192 pages ₹599

  Suicide is a contentious subject. It involves deeply held moral, religious, ethical and legal beliefs. Those who choose to die by suicide usually cannot argue their case amid the speculation that follows. Recently, a former Canadian High Commissioner informed his friends that he had chosen to use Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying following a diagnosis of early-stage Alzheimer’s. This has sparked a domestic and international discussion on the ethics or otherwise of assisted suicide. So, when a mother who lost both her sons to suicide (unassisted in the US) chooses to respect their decision, readers are likely to be stunned and pro-life contenders agitated. 

Yiyun Li is an award-winning Chinese-American author with multiple novels and short story collections to her name. She lost her elder son, Vincent (16), in 2017, and James (19) in 2024. Both chose suicide. Upon Vincent’s death, she wrote a novel Where Reasons End  (2019) featuring dialogue between a grieving writer and her son after his suicide. She writes, “The book for Vincent [who lived flamboyantly and demandingly] was published as fiction because it could only be called that: no dead child has ever come back to have an argument with his mother.” 

For James, the silent one who indulged in philosophy and languages, she says, “It’s an impossible task to write a book for James. It will have to be done through thinking, rather than feeling; that is how I will reach for an approximation of understanding James.” The result is a profoundly poignant contemplation, Things in Nature Merely Grow.  

This isn’t a grief memoir and isn’t meant for anyone searching for lessons or resolution. Losing two children entails chronic suffering for parents. Li chooses radical acceptance as a way of living, an acceptance of being in an abyss, and writing about facts and logic. She neither provides any closure nor answers the questions readers might have about suicides in the first place. She reflects on life’s extremities, quotes Montaigne, reads Shakespeare, Euripides and Euclid and, most importantly, she denies any comfort to readers at the expense of making herself understood. 

Li writes with precision, and denies using “grief” or “mourning” to describe her experiences. These words imply that there’s an end to the suffering. In speaking of such never-ending suffering, she provides a language to people who find themselves at a loss. In being unapologetic about her stance to stay true to her reality, she provides courage to people living with continuous hard-to-categorise loss that “suffuses one’s being; one no longer resists.” 

As she distinguishes facts from feelings and weak wishes, the helplessness of a parent comes to the forefront. Li and her partner come from abusive families, and created an open space for their children to have honest conversations. Vincent asks about the suffering in existence, James confesses that his skill is to not be noticed by anyone. The author questions, “If a child is not, in many ways, compatible with the world, should the parents gently usher him out of his cocoon [...] Or should the parents fortify that cocoon to keep him safely there?” 

Without intending to, she invites readers into the discourse of parenting: Is there any right way of parenting, and if there is one, then does that keep their children safe? It drives home the absurdity of existence that Albert Camus talks about in The Myth of Sisyphus, a book that James read before his decision to end his life. Li refrains from making a connection, from interpreting something she can never know. 

Her restraint is the strength of her prose even as she rightfully rages against people who make her suffering about themselves, the ones who see this as an opportunity to preach God, and the aspiring writers who sent her manuscripts for feedback, asking her to connect them to the publishers. She was called a murderer by Chinese media owing to the fact that she fled the country in 1990s, never to look back. This sheer malevolence when juxtaposed with Li’s nuanced understanding for her son’s decision makes the readers look at the world in its most cruel form where people are keen to speak, unwilling to sit in discomfort. 

Things in Nature Merely Grow is as difficult a book to review as it is for parents to continue living after losing their sons. Amid Li’s conflicting relationship with words, philosophies, intellect and feelings, one is struck by the intimate relationship between the brothers. Vincent wanted to take care of James after his parents, and for James, Vincent was his whole world. As the author weaves through deep philosophies and the love between the siblings, it leaves the grim reality, even a purpose to one’s life cannot stop him from choosing death. The book draws attention to the discomfort of not knowing the “why” behind these suicides. This intimacy isn’t let out for the readers’ voyeurism. It asks, can we sit with this discomfort? 

In the end, this book is a lament of a mother: “That a mother can no longer mother her children won’t change the fact that her thoughts are mostly a mother’s thoughts.” In her explorations, Li has created compelling and unforgettable prose that challenges the ongoing discourse on suicide.

The reviewer is an independent writer based in Sambalpur, Odisha. 

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