Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Following two periods of hospitalization for suicidal depression, Yiyun Li wrote these essays to examine her desire to vanish from her own history. The text navigates her decision to stop writing in Chinese, her native tongue, in favor of English, a language she views as a protective barrier from her past. Li analyzes her existence through the works of writers like William Trevor, Katherine Mansfield, and Søren Kierkegaard, viewing her life not as a narrative of recovery, but as a persistent state of observation.

This collection serves readers who prefer clinical, unsentimental accounts of mental distress over uplifting memoirs. It attracts those interested in the relationship between linguistic choice and personal identity, particularly how adopting a foreign language can function as a tool for survival. Readers finish the book with a framework for understanding depression as a detachment from time rather than a temporary sadness. It provides a sobering look at why some individuals choose to live through literature when their own reality feels uninhabitable.