This is a really deep dive into reading, the notion of the self, and suicide. It comes from a very dark place. It is a sort of rock bottom point, but then looking up to see what else there is. I think it has been one of the better books to understand suicide and suicidal thoughts that I have read. The more she writes about her everyday experiences, her past experiences, and how she disappears in reading the more I can understand this perspective. It delves into the deepest of despairs and in looking, finds a way out of the darkness.

"People who have not experienced a suicidal urge miss a crucial point. It is not that one wants to end one’s life, but that the only way to end the pain—that eternal fight against one’s melodrama so that it does not transgress—is to wipe out the body. I distrust judgments—Mann’s or anyone’s—on suicide. They are, in the end, judgments on feelings."





NOTES FROM
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Yiyun Li
June 12, 2017 Amongst People Harder to endure than fresh pain is pain that has already been endured: a reminder that one is not far from who one was. Why write to open old wounds. Why relive a memoir, when that too is an indulgence.June 12, 2017

Amongst People To read oneself into another person’s tale is the opposite of how and why I read. To read is to be with people who, unlike those around one, do not notice one’s existence.June 12, 2017

Amongst People Willfulness is a strange optimist. It turns the inevitable into the desirable. If aloneness is inevitable, I want to believe that aloneness is what I have desired because it is happiness itself. It must be a miscomprehension—though I have been unwilling to give it up—that one’s life could be lived as a series of solitary moments. In between, time spent with other people is the time to prepare for their disappearance. That there is an opposite perspective I can only understand theoretically. The time line is also a repetition of one’s lapse into isolation. It’s not others who vanish, but from others one vanishes.June 12, 2017

Amongst People one holds on to smaller doses of that nowhereness: reading a book that keeps the world at bay for as long as the words last, making up stories about characters who care little about one.June 14, 2017

Amongst People The paths I walked by myself in Beijing are gone. Even if the city had remained unchanged, I have turned away from the people and the language and the landscape. Homecoming, in my case, would only be meaningful followed by leave-taking. A permanent homecoming would be a resignation. To be among people—does that require one to be at home with others, to be at peace with oneself? But an agitated mind does not know the road to peace but that away from home, which time and again exposes one to that lifelong phobia of attachment, just as to write betrays one’s instinct to curl up and hide. Every word one says, every word one writes, every dream and fear and hope and despair one reveals to others and to oneself—they all end up like chicks refusing to be returned to the eggshell. June 14, 2017

Memory Is a Melodrama from Which No One Is Exempt The mind, to avoid targeting itself, becomes two: one which, by aligning with others, is protected; and one which, by staying quiet, eludes being conquered. A self preserved by restraint is the self that will prevail.June 14, 2017

Memory Is a Melodrama from Which No One Is Exempt I have always believed that, between living and dying, from being to being no longer, there are secrets understood by those nearer death.June 14, 2017

Memory Is a Melodrama from Which No One Is Exempt The book is timeless; one has only to account for one’s own changing in time.June 14, 2017

Memory Is a Melodrama from Which No One Is Exempt There is a defiance that comes only with youth and inexperience, the refusal to accept life as it isJune 14, 2017

Memory Is a Melodrama from Which No One Is Exempt People who have not experienced a suicidal urge miss a crucial point. It is not that one wants to end one’s life, but that the only way to end the pain—that eternal fight against one’s melodrama so that it does not transgress—is to wipe out the body. I distrust judgments—Mann’s or anyone’s—on suicide. They are, in the end, judgments on feelings.June 16, 2017

Amongst Characters It is easier to take something away than to give. Giving requires understanding and imagination; taking away requires only resolution and action.June 16, 2017

Amongst Characters To say we know a person is to write that person off. This is at times life’s necessity. We run out of time or patience or curiosity; or we depart, willingly or not, from the situation that makes investigation possible and necessary. A person written off may become a character—depending on the charity of memory.June 16, 2017

Amongst Characters A writer’s cruelty is to exile a real person to fiction. She is forced to give up her unknowability. When she defies that fate she is defenseless against the readers, who deem her an unsuccessful character.June 16, 2017


Amongst Characters But what if one’s real context is in books? Some days, going from one book to another, preoccupied with thoughts that were of no importance, I would feel a rare moment of serenity: all that could not be solved in my life was merely a trifle as long as I kept it at a distance. Between that suspended life and myself were these dead people and imagined characters. One could spend one’s days among them as a child arranges a circle of stuffed animals when the darkness of night closes in. June 16, 2017 Amongst Characters I seal up journals and shelve books, but they still are my permanency. Unlike human lives and feelings, they are not written in vanishing ink.June 16, 2017

Amongst Characters How is the novel? One asks that as one does about an ill person, and a novel that’s not yet finished is rather like that. You reach the end and the thing is either dead or in much better shape. The dead should be left in peace. June 16, 2017

To Speak Is to Blunder but I Venture The wisdom to adapt is the wisdom to have two languages: the one spoken by others, and the one spoken to oneself.June 18, 2017

Either/Or: A Chorus of Miscellany A young person, beginning to read seriously, tends to live—infatuated, even—with one book at a time. The world offered by the book is large enough to contain all other worlds, or exclusive enough to make all other worlds retreat. Sometimes the book is replaced by another, the old world giving way to a new one; the enchantment—or the entrapment—may also be an experience that happens once in life.June 18, 2017

Either/Or: A Chorus of Miscellany For years I have had the belief that all my questions will be answered by the books I am reading. Books, however, only lead to other books.June 18, 2017

Either/Or: A Chorus of Miscellany Reading, however, is a kind of private freedom: out of time, out of place.June 18, 2017

Reading William Trevor This, as I explained to him, was to become a writer. To write is to find a new way to see the world, and I did not doubt, as I was reading Trevor, that I wanted to see as he does.June 18, 2017

Reading William Trevor Cruelty and kindness, revisited are not what they appear to be.June 18, 2017 Reading William Trevor we are solitary travelers, having crossed paths in the land of stories.June 18, 2017

Afterword: On Being a Flat Character, and Inventing AlternativesI would like to believe that there are as many alternatives in life as in fiction; that roads not taken, having once been weighed as options, define one as much as the irreversible direction of the chosen path. What would have become of you had you not left China? asks a friend; what would have become of you had you not landed in Iowa City, or had you stayed a scientist? What I can offer, are not alternatives, are only negatives. I would not have chosen English as my natural language; I would not have known one can go to school for writing; I would not have become a writer.June 18, 2017

Afterword: On Being a Flat Character, and Inventing AlternativesPractitioners of that vanishing act develop the belief—illusion, really—that one can exist unobserved.June 18, 2017

Afterword: On Being a Flat Character, and Inventing AlternativesThere is no ladder out of any world; each world is rimless—my friend Amy Leach writes. A ladder is no longer what I am seeking. Rather, I want one day to be able to say to myself: Dear friend, we have waited this out.


All Excerpts From
Li, Yiyun. “Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life.” Random House Publishing Group - Random House, 2017-02-21. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Read. Write. Live.

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li (Random House Trade Paperbacks, $16).

This first memoir from Yiyun Li, noted fiction writer and UC Davis professor, is multifaceted. Some sections (more like linked essays, really) read like straight-up autobiography, including narrative’s of Li’s time in the People’s Liberation Army; her immigration to the U.S., initially as an immunologist; and her decision to move from science to writing.

Other sections are very literary, concerned with her influences–authors as diverse as Thomas Hardy and Elizabeth Bowen.

And then there is the deeply personal, as Li delves into her struggles with depression, including thoughts of suicide.

What binds it all together is Li’s delicate, precise language and her unflinching eye for the truth of humanity. The great questions of her life, then, are slowly answered: Read. Write. Live.

I was unable to finish this book. After about twenty pages I gave up on reading it. There didn't seem to be a running narrative, or the writing style was too experimental for my tastes.

Yiyun Li is a Chinese-American writer who moved from China to the US when she was 24 years old. Although her mother tongue is Chinese, from the very beginning she started to write in English. She has won many awards for her writing. This is her memoir.

For a decade, Li tried to be a perfect mother, writer and full-time worker. During those 10 years, she used to write between midnight and four in the morning --- and then one day she just could not do it anymore. She became depressed and even tried to commit suicide. As a result, she was hospitalized twice. She wrote DEAR FRIEND, FROM MY LIFE I WRITE TO YOU IN YOUR LIFE for two years, and her intention, at first, was to argue for and against suicide at the same time. But once one starts reading this magnificent memoir, it soon becomes obvious that this is about much more than that. The reader will not find out the details of Li’s depression or suicide attempt, and she does not even write too much about her hospital stays. There is no recollection of her dark times, because this is a memoir about healing.
Full review available at: https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/dear-friend-from-my-life-i-write-to-you-in-your-life

This introspective non-fiction piece covers some interesting topics but ultimately fell flat for me. I enjoyed the author’s short story collection “Gold Boy, Emerald Girl” when it came out, and generally I love hearing writers talk about the books they love, so I thought this would be a good pick. However, the writing in this volume has a rambling, self-indulgent quality that made the reading of it more work than pleasure.

There were some autobiographical elements from her early years that piqued my interest, but Li makes clear this is not an autobiography – she consciously shies away from that approach. There is a brave attempt to talk about her mental health problems and hospitalization, but again the specific context is far from clear, and she is happier sharing details of the other mental patients, which I thought was irrelevant and perhaps a bit unfair on them – even if no names are named.

As I had anticipated, I liked the parts where she talks about her favourite writers and their works, and I’m looking forward to tracking down books by John McGahern and others that were new to me. However, I really wish she had made the list of readings shorter – the section headed “A Partial List of Books”. It’s not that helpful to be given four books by one author, much better to pick the one that means the most to you, even if it invites controversy.

I am grateful to NetGalley and Random House for the chance to read an advance copy of this work.

*review revised June 25, 2017

I love this book. At first, I was skeptical, but as the larger picture emerged, I was moved by how intensely the author considers her life and her relation to others, especially through literature. Her self-examination is unsparing, and her insights have a clarity of expression that comes from her struggle to write them in her new adopted language, English. I found myself writing out passages, something I rarely do.

To understand Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li, you have to understand the context in which it came to be written. I struggle with how to rate this book. On the one hand, I have enormous respect for the author's struggle with mental health. On the other hand, the book reads as a therapeutic outlet for the author rather than a memoir to be shared with others. I bear witness to the struggle, wish her well, and move on.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2017/03/dear-friend-from-my-life-i-write-to-you.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

I know this book got excellent reviews, but I could not get through it.

Very Emphatic. The situations I read of are embossed on mind. For readers who like to think and write about it, it is great mind candy.

I'm not going to finish this book and I'm not going to rate it. I couldn't quite figure out what I was reading -- a memoir, thoughts about other authors, snippets of disconnected thoughts about life, death and writing? But it's hard for me to be too be harsh and give it a low rating, because Li appears to have written her book in the context of a serious depression, including more than one hospitalization. This book seems to be her attempt to figure things out through reflections on her life and other writers, but to me as a reader it felt aimless and impenetrable. At one point, Li writes of another author "Reading her is like trudging through a frozen snowfield in the dark. Even though her words seem to have been written out of the wish to communicate, together they take on a frustrating opaqueness." Exactly! Maybe Li's book will make more sense to others, but it wasn't for me. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

Interesting but it wasn't for me. While Li is known as a wonderful writer, I found this did not flow. I also did not find her a sympathetic character but I'm not sure she wants to be. This is more musings than a memoir. THanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'm not sure who I would recommend this to because I think it's hit or miss on whether it speaks to you or not.

A fascinating collection of essays, thoughts, opinions created as a memoir about understanding life.

Random House and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. This is my honest opinion of the book.

Yiyun Li has written her personal musings on life, on depression, and on how she worked past her sadness through literature. This is an intensely private journey for the author, as it is more about the books that spoke to her as an individual. The book tends to ramble on in a series of seemingly unrelated thought "bubbles".

Personally, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life did not speak to me and I found it hard to connect with the author in any meaningful way. Many of the thoughts expounded by the author were deeply personal and I did not glean hope or a wider message from them. This clearly was not the book for me, but other readers might gain some insight from its pages.

It’s an honor to be invited to review any book by Random House and Net Galley, and so when the email came, I accepted without hesitation; I thank them for thinking of me and wish I could honestly recommend this one. Others have referred to this memoir, whose title is taken from a quote by Katharine Mansfield, as “exquisite, intimate, and lyrical”, and the author has won awards for her novels. I looked carefully to see if I could locate the genius in this book, but it eluded me completely.

The intimacy of the work is surely apparent. In essence, this is a mental health memoir, and the author writes of her fight with depression, her multiple suicide attempts and hospitalizations, of the expectation of others that she should continue to live when she didn’t want to. It’s brave writing, although mental health battles are now a fairly mainstream topic, but I am unable to find anything tangible to engage my interest.

My only real pleasure is in discovering that Li is already a successful writer; had it been a debut, I would have been scared silly. After all, if I say I don’t like the book, will the writer harm herself? What if I simply dodge the whole thing and let it get lost in the shuffle; will it happen then as well? But in seeing that this is someone with an established career and a wall full of accolades, probably the displeasure of one humble blogger won’t create a great deal of trauma.

The whole thing is bleak. The writer reminds us repeatedly that her life is private, that no one has the right to know any of its details and all I can think is, so what are we doing here, exactly?

Those that have read and enjoyed Li’s novels may find more to hang their hats on than I have found. All I know is that it is painful to read, has no beginning, middle or end that I can find, and is devoid of the literary qualities that can sometimes make a sad book enjoyable. I can’t recommend it.

Unfortunately, I was not able to finish this book. I got about half way through and couldn't justify it anymore. The writing is convoluted and I spent half my time trying to figure out what the heck she was trying to tell me.

This book is too triggering for me to read. She speaks beautifully about depression--but her words about depression are so exacting that I can't read them right now. I need to pass on this book.

I probably should have picked something more lightweight after finishing Affinity Konar's devastatingly moving "Mischling". As it was, I dove headfirst into this, Yiyun Li's musings on life and death.
Focusing more on the latter, Li delivers an autobiographical tale of her years spent battling depression and seeking solace in literature.
While I don't doubt the veracity of her struggles, for me it was all a little too self absorbed and self pitying to connect with. While I can associate with the beauty of literature as a guiding light through the darkness, Li's tendency to turn to the maudlin at every available opportunity was too much for my sunnier disposition.
The detailed passages around the authors she finds solace in were too dry for my liking - I felt if there was an author I wasn't aware of, I could have just googled them and found out the same information.
All in all, a strange blend of literature lessons and life lessons that failed to combine into something that connected with me.

I was both intrigued by what I had read about this book and hesitant about whether it would "speak to me." Thus, I was pleasantly surprised, when I started it, to very quickly become intrigued by the writer's introspections and pulled into her story. However, this did not sustain itself as too frequently her thoughts ran on and on. I would recommend it only to those who have a particular interest in the author or who are willing to endure its slow, repetitive pace.

In Dear Friend: From My Life I Write to You in Your Life, Yiyun Li offers a raw, heartbreaking exploration of the author's ongoing struggle with suicide, the necessity of solitude, and a friendship that transcends age and nationality. What lingers after the last page is the intensity of the author's relationship with William Trevor, a friendship that seeps into every page of the book. Throughout, Li keeps readers in the dark about the events that led to her two suicide attempts. But the events seem less important in the context of this memoir than the author's attempts to navigate depression while living in a world that wants to know more. Many readers will feel for the author's children, who, as they grown older, will have both the gift and the burden of a painfully intimate glimpse of their mother's pain and the difficulty she finds in attempting to love.

In prose that is both concise and elliptical, filled with blank spaces and unanswered questions, Yiyun Li speaks movingly of the need for privacy and the absence of a sense of self, while baring intimate details of her life and psyche. This book will be likely remembered alongside William Styron's Darkness Visible.

First, thank you to NetGalley and Random House publishers for the opportunity to read and enjoy this e-book. I found this book a bit hard to get through, somewhat dark in subject, as the author tells her struggles with depression and suicidal ideations. From a scientist to a writer, she has become a very good one, and I am sure her tales would very much interest readers who are more "thinkers" than I am - really, very well-written, but just couldn't keep my attention. Those who are interested in human psychology would find it fascinating.