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.
You might also like
The demand for a meaning which the world does not supply is often disguised under a passion for metaphysics. But the real problem is not to find the world meaningful, but to endure it without meaning—and still to act.
Lionel Trilling — The Liberal Imagination
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. And yet the history of science is a history of that ambition refusing to accept the universe's indifference.
Jacob Bronowski — Science and Human Values
She smiled sweetly at me then, offering some words of comfort: AH, WELL THAT'S THE PROBLEM WITH HAVING BOTH SETS OF GRANDPARENTS STILL ALIVE! WHEN THEY POP IT, YOU'LL BE SORTED!
Holly Hartland