In “Extra,” the first story of the collection, this important object performs in a narrative twist and also serves as a possible inside joke regarding the iron rice bowl, a well-used metaphor for the promise of a lifetime of sufficiency from a Communist economy.īut why engage with a review from The Oprah Magazine, a source that one might expect to be less than intellectually substantial? Because such a reception is not unusual, and because it is used to help market the book. Specificity is a positive trait, especially when just enough details appear to provide and speak to a familiarity with, say, a metal lunchbox typical of a certain time in China. Furthermore, must we consider a literary work to have a “universal” appeal in order to find it valuable? Let us answer: no. These narratives include a keen awareness of the visual and the social, and this awareness is what brings these stories to life. Historical and other details are not in these stories simply for their own sake or to add spice. Moreover, although one might say that Li’s stories are “universal” despite recognizable details that reveal, for example, historical specificity, it seems more reasonable to appreciate how this specificity augments these stories in an unusually organic manner. The wife’s citation of Marx and Mao meanwhile shows how non-universal politics dictate personal relationships. In their exchange of harsh words, the non-monogamous husband does not claim that having a concubine is a Chinese tradition but instead tries to argue that it is a revolutionary idea. At the same time, all these subjects are informed by political dogma, as the angry wife of the man who wants to commit bigamy with a “concubine” demonstrates. Such themes as a quest for intimacy, the dynamics between a parent and a child, a desire to find a measure of contentment in life, questions regarding the workings of evil, and ways of determining moral behavior, are important in this book. Of course it is accurate to note that presumably “universal” themes regarding human behavior and interpersonal relationships are evident in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. So, such a story would only be endlessly mysterious to a reader who has no access to Chinese history, and it would only transcend history and geography, and become timeless if one didn’t realize that it had happened in reality, in China. This bird-killing policy is commonly used as an example of the disastrous effects of agricultural policies ordered during the Cultural Revolution. For example, the killing of sparrows in the story, “Immortality,” is an incident reminiscent of a known policy instituted in China during the Cultural Revolution and Chairman Mao’s reign. Although this work is not necessarily overtly political, the invented worlds of these characters are very much dependent on external forces that include governmental policies and an identifiable historical moment. transcend history and geography, and are universal, timeless, and endlessly mysterious.” The domestic narratives that are so well-crafted in this collection are set in very specific contexts, with perceptible back stories of Chinese politics. However, perhaps a somewhat off-base appraisal comes from O: The Oprah Magazine, when its reviewer states that the stories “. Li’s short stories have received much well-deserved praise for their superb use of language. Thus the simple, Orientalist binary of China as the site of evil, and America as the site of good, refreshingly does not make an appearance in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. China and America themselves are both multidimensional characters. Similarly, China is more than a backward, fallen civilization, but has different nuances in each story. It is not always a desirable land of plenty instead it is the recipient of complex projections by characters who may refuse to simply idealize it. Here, America is a powerful trope, not just a geographical setting. While bedrooms may not feature in each of the stories, the stories convey the sense that one’s home or personal life always exists under the watchful presence of a larger community or governmental power.Īs with the nonfiction pieces that Li has published, these stories provide a fond if bittersweet slice of life in contemporary China and offer glimpses of Chinese impressions of America. Li’s award-winning collection of stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, proposes that the bedroom is not a refuge from political ideology, and that one’s everyday existence is consistently determined by actual political conditions and social and economic constraints, as well as by abstract notions of fate. Chairman Mao didn’t tell you to have a concubine,” argues a woman to her adulterous, would-be polygamous husband in Yiyun Li’s short story, “After a Life.”
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