Loading...
33rd out of 50 books
—
8 voters
My rating:
add to my books
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
by
Yiyun Li
Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable new writer whose breathtaking stories are set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States. In this rich, astonishing collection, Yiyun Li illuminates how mythology, politics, history, and culture intersect with personality to create fate. From the bustling heart of Beijing, to a ...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
September 12th 2006
by Random House Trade Paperbacks
(first published September 12th 2005)
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
1,093)
My first unbeknownst exposure to Yiyun Li was in the Wayne Wang film, The Princess of Nebraska, which was based on Li’s story of the same name. My first thought was if it was your decision to cast Boshen as a white guy in the film then shame on you Wayne Wang! Boshen is supposed to be Chinese! I think that makes it a lot more interesting and slightly less creepy than a middle aged white man who is in love with an 18 year old Chinese man. I like the tension between Sasha and Boshen because they’r...more
view 2 comments
Yiyun Li came to read at Saint Mary's College of California in the Bay Area a year or so ago, and I'll never forget how she explained her method of creating drama. In a crude paraphrasing, from what I can fuzzily recall, she said each of her characters are strategically angled in opposition to one another. And these angles are where she starts from, so the story's conflict is immediate and urgent.
In her short story collection A Thousand Good Years of Prayers each character vies to b...more
In her short story collection A Thousand Good Years of Prayers each character vies to b...more
I read this a good 6 months ago so it's hard to remember what I thought. I do recall that the first story, about an old woman's relationship with a young boy, moved me to tears, and there were a few other stories I really liked and which were quite moving and/or clever, especially this one about a boy who looks just like Chairman Mao. There were also stories that were boring and willfully depressing. I mean, all the stories are depressing, and my tastes in fact run a little to the downbeat so th...more
This was my bookclub read for April and I have to confess that I didn't finish it. I'm not a fan of short stories and so put off reading it until I just didn't have enough time to finish it in the time available. However, as far as short stories go, these ones were better than a lot I've read. Which isn't saying much, but it's something!
The writing was good, but the stories themselves were very negative and depressing. They dealt with the lives of Chinese people in modern day China a...more
The writing was good, but the stories themselves were very negative and depressing. They dealt with the lives of Chinese people in modern day China a...more
I love the characters and stories - especially the boy who looked like Mao and Lao Da who killed the county officials and their family members because his son died / murdered without getting any justice. The characters are all memorable in their own way, their stories linger in my head and eyes long after I finished reading them. I like the way Yiyun Li bring her characters to face each other with their different views on life and culture, and how she portrays generation and cultural gaps betwee...more
Vanessa Wu
added it
I am very interested in the life of the woman who wrote these stories. There is no doubt that they are a first rate contribution to world literature. They are serious, controlled, thoughtful and deeply felt. But I hate reading them. They are like a bitter pill to me and I don't want to take it. There is a China that is not shown here. You might think that this other China doesn't exist, could never exist. Yiyun Li doesn't want these stories to be published in China. Perhaps it's because the Chin...more
I've been reading references and recoomendations bout Yiyun Li's work this year, and I'm so glad that I finally picked up one of her books. This collection of short stories was well crafted and very interesting. Most of the stories dealt with relaitonships abbetween men and women and families. The stories were good and there was a lot about Chinese culture and history, so much that I felt like I was learning cultural facts while I was reading.
This was her first collection of short st...more
This was her first collection of short st...more
With a Plimpton Prize and publications in the New Yorker and Paris Review, Li has found her natural medium: writing stories in her nonnative English. Her language is simple and graceful, her observations of modern life penetrating and moving. In her book debut, she has rendered, with freshness, the rich tapestry of global Chinese life in all its complexity, angst, and comfort.
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
Ernest Junius
rated it
All in the same theme, Yiyun Li's stories are all about (pretty much) Chinese people who try to run away (to the States). Very interesting descriptions and prose style; Li's words are heavily coloured by the vibrant colours of China revolution. She summons Mao a lot in her book, also famous Chinese proverbs, and the less famous one and the more obscure too. These are quite refreshing to me, as this book is the first book from a Chinese author I've ever read.
I noted too, a few other i...more
I noted too, a few other i...more
I finished this book and I have mixed feelings. Not because the stories are bad. On the contrary, they are quite good. What bothered me is that almost aggressive anti-communistic attitude. There is one sentence where old Iranian woman says "I love China. China a good country, very old" and that would be pretty much everything said positive about China (and that comes from the mouth of Iranian women who never visited the country she's talking about!).
I don't have doubts that...more
I don't have doubts that...more
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers = many hours of good reading. What happened to the "common people" after the cultural revolution in China. Yiyun Li tells individual stories that are as different from each other as the individual characters themselves, but are connected by a common struggle for survival within a system that seems to evolved into an uncontrolled monster. Many of the character's problems will seem familiar to economically depressed people in any country, but attempts hav...more
Terrific short stories...dealing with a rich culture and the changes that individuals endure. My personal favorite, if I had to choose would be the one which bears the same name as the title of the collection. It is told from the point of view of an elderly Chinese father who visits his estranged and aloof daughter in the states. But then I also loved Extra about a devoted and dedicated grandmother. And the Princess of Nebraska...and well it is worth reading again and again.
The stories gift the reader with a sense of China by delivering intimate tales of its people. A young writer who can write of sons and daughters disparaging their elders, and not make me mad as an elder, has me thoroughly engaged in the story, and that's Yiyun Li's brilliance. Calm visualization, eerily wise prose, and stories that linger. Moral dilemmas, personal tragedies, and a ruthless regime are the water on the paper, and the inner resources the characters call upon flow like color from Li...more
An excellent collection of short stories by a Chinese writer who came to the US when she was 21; Li stumbled into writing while she was doing a PH.D. in biology or something at Iowa. What a story! She reminds me a little of Ha Jin -- their writing is simple, spare one might say but at times quite beautiful and most important of all they have unique, interesting stories (mostly about China) to share with American and English speaking readers.
There are many insights into people's lives/thoughts/dreams during the dark times in China through these short stories. This quote from the title story has stuck with me for days: "Baba, if you grew up in a language that you never used to express your feelings, it would be easier to take up another language and talk more in the new language. It makes you a new person." I still find it difficult and unnatural to say "I love you" in Chinese...
This is a book of short stories, most of which are placed in China with a few about Chinese immigrants that are in the US. The reason I was disappointed is that the quality of the stories is amazingly inconsistent. Some of them, like the one the book is titled after, are really good, while others were poorly written and/or absolutely bored me to death. Such a shame because I think this writer is good, but just needs better editing.
Holy shit this was good, and I'm not saying that b/c I'm in China assholes. She won the 2005 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and her second collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl was shortlisted for the same award. Her debut novel The Vagrants was shortlisted for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
She was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow. I realize I just copied that from wikipedia but who cares. This was without question one of the best SS anthologies I've opened....more
She was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow. I realize I just copied that from wikipedia but who cares. This was without question one of the best SS anthologies I've opened....more
Even though this book is pretty short, and it's all short stories, it took me a really long time to read it. It wasn't because the stories were poorly written, it was mostly because they're all extremely sad. It seems like they're all about bitter divorces, lifetimes of unrequited loves, or self-castration.
Mostly this book reinforced my long standing belief that I will never understand Chinese people.
Mostly this book reinforced my long standing belief that I will never understand Chinese people.
I really enjoyed this book. Yiyun Li's imaginative short stories can be devoured in one sitting or savoured, but I couldn't resist turning each page waiting for the next great character or fascinating plot. She has a lovely way with words, but I found the stories quite depressing in parts and there were other areas I skimmed over because I found it just too negative.
However I would really recommend it.
However I would really recommend it.
oh my. at first i did not like this book at all. like at all. but somewhere towards the end of the first short story i found myself completely impressed. "immortality"--a story about eunuchs and a boy born with the dictator's face--is devastating and gorgeous. there's a lot of myth-making in this book, but it's done in an extremely skillful way that made me want to go on the ride.
I think this book is remarkable for the number of rules Li has broken while writing fantastic stories. I'm thinking particularly of the amount of passive exposition in some of the stories; but despite this weight of overt writerly involvement, they work because so much of the drama is immediate, and because you get the sense that, as with Lahiri, Li knows these characters inside out. My two favourite stories from this collection are Immortality and the title story, probably because they take mor...more
Es un libro diferente a los que me suelo leer. Está bien escrito y cuenta historias muy bonitas, pero un poco demasiado deprimentes (no es la clase de libro que necesitaba en estos momentos, ya estoy bastante desmotivado). Pero sin duda es un libro que da que pensar. Cómo el lugar y el tiempo en el que has nacido condicionan tu vida y tu forma de pensar , tu forma de afrontar la vida. Y aunque trates de cambiarlo, tu infancia siempre deja una marca en tu personalidad.
I found these stories quite peculiar really. Partly i think because they are from a completely different time and culture to mine. I can't decide if I liked the writing style either as it's all tied up with the culture. They are not uplifting stories at all, just strange, but maybe that is because they are from a very hard time ?
I liked this book, though some stories more than others. You can see the growth from the first story to the last, and there's a real sense of place and of an entire set of people being left aside as China moves into the present, sometimes at the expense of its citizens and customs. A good read, I'd give it 3.5 stars.
A beautifully-written collection of short stories, moving and thought-provoking. That's the problem with short stories (like poems) for me; they can be so intense that I feel like I need to let one sink in before moving on to the next one. Her stories are set both in China and the US, reflecting on how Chinese culture manifests in the two different societies.
--"wasn't there an old saying about men always being interested in change, and women in preservation? A woman accepted an...more
--"wasn't there an old saying about men always being interested in change, and women in preservation? A woman accepted an...more
I enjoyed several of these stories, but I'd have to say that as a collection I found them a bit difficult to get into. I think I probably lack a bit of context to really understand them, too. I'd look forward to reading more by Yiyun Li though, and probably re-visiting this collection in the future too.
This was an accomplished collection, written in deceptively simple prose. Some of the stories contain a sliver of dark humor, i.e. the man whose face resembled Mao's so much he embarked on a stunt double career. Most of them contained a kernel of genuine feeling, a fleeting moment where it felt as if the author had transported herself into the page and left her imprint and memories of China on the page. This is a postmodern China we're seeing, but one that had not yet left its Mao legacy behi...more
A dazzling collection of stories that shed light on what life could have been like in China in the past 60-70 years. The author has a beautiful way of giving insightful glimpses into the difficulty of relationships, the weight of family expectations, and the lure of the American dream.
The stories were well written but I felt let down by the endings - they all seemed to veer off into a strange direction. I kept reading these short stories hoping the next one would have a better ending. Although these stories did seem to be depressing or negative, they were well written so if the endings left me with some type of feeling of finality or justice, I would have appreciated these stories.
Good collection of short stories. A bit hit-and-miss, but overall there were quite a few stories that will stick with me for a long time. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future, as I enjoyed her writing style.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPSV Mrs. Rodgers...: Ciara Tirona | 1 | 4 | Dec 04, 2011 02:51pm |
Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China and moved to the United States in 1996. She received an MFA from Iowa Writers' Workshop and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review,and elsewhere. She has received a Whiting Writers' Award and was awarded a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX. Her debut ...more
More about Yiyun Li...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.”
—
2 people liked it
“Mrs. Pang was once a nanny for me, and she spoils me the way I imagined kindhearted women would spoil an orphan, loving me for whom I am, exactly the opposite of my mother, whose love I have to earn with great effort and with little success.”
—
1 person liked it
More quotes…
