10 Feb
2009
10 Feb
'09
9:30 a.m.
Radio Free Asia & the Asia Society present award-winning author Yiyun
Li, who will discuss her new novel The Vagrants.
Date: February 18th
Time: 6:40 - 8:15 pm
Location: Radio Free Asia, 2025 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036.
Ground-floor conference center.
Cost: Asia Society members and RFA staff $5, nonmembers $10. Please RSVP
at https://secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=375965 RSVP deadline: noon,
Tuesday, February 17th.
Set in China in the late 1970s and inspired by author Yiyun Li's own
experiences, The Vagrants is a deeply imaginative, beautifully realized
story of life in the provincial city of Muddy River.
"Magnificent. . . . Li records these events dispassionately and with
such a magisterial sense of direction that the reader can't help being
drawn into the novel, like a sleeper trapped in an anxiety dream."
- Publishers Weekly (Starred review)
A young woman from Muddy River, Gu Shan, always a bold spirit and a
former follower of the late Chairman Mao, has renounced her faith in
communism. A political prisoner, she is to be executed for her
dissention. Her distraught mother, determined to follow the
superstitious custom of burning her only child's clothing for the
journey to the next world, is about to make another bold decision. Her
father, who has already buried his rebellious daughter in his mind and
heart, begins to retreat into memories of the past. Neither can imagine
that their daughter's execution will have profound and far-reaching
effects on other people, in their town, and in Beijing beyond.
Yiyun Li is a winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story
Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, and the Guardian First Book
Award. She grew up in Beijing and attended Peking University. She came
to the United States in 1996 to study medicine and started writing two
years later. After receiving a master's degree in immunology from the
University of Iowa, she attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she
received an MFA. The author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Li was
selected for a Whiting Award and named by Granta as one of best young
American novelists. Yiyun Li teaches at the University of California,
Davis and lives in Oakland, California.
Sarah Jackson-Han, Media Relations Director at Radio Free Asia and
formerly with NPR and Agence France-Presse, will moderate the
discussion.
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and
publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian
languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news
media. RFA's broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion
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Sarah Jackson-Han
Director, Media Relations
Radio Free Asia (RFA)
jacksonhans(a)rfa.org
202 530 7774 w
202 907 4613 m
