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The Vagrants

3.81 of 5 stars 3.81 · rating details · 1,310 ratings · 312 reviews

Brilliant and illuminating, this astonishing debut novel by the award-winning writer Yiyun Li is set in China in the late 1970s, when Beijing was rocked by the Democratic Wall Movement, an anti-Communist groundswell designed to move China beyond the dark shadow of the Cultural Revolution toward a more enlightened and open society. In this powerful and beautiful story, we f...more Brilliant and illuminating, this astonishing debut novel by the award-winning writer Yiyun Li is set in China in the late 1970s, when Beijing was rocked by the Democratic Wall Movement, an anti-Communist groundswell designed to move China beyond the dark shadow of the Cultural Revolution toward a more enlightened and open society. In this powerful and beautiful story, we follow a group of people in a small town during this dramatic and harrowing time, the era that was a forebear of the Tiananmen Square uprising.

Morning dawns on the provincial city of Muddy River. A young woman, Gu Shan, a bold spirit and a follower of Chairman Mao, has renounced her faith in Communism. Now a political prisoner, she is to be executed for her dissent. Her distraught mother, determined to follow the custom of burning her only child’s clothing to ease her journey into the next world, is about to make another bold decision. Shan’s father, Teacher Gu, who has already, in his heart and mind, buried his rebellious daughter, begins to retreat into memories. Neither of them imagines that their daughter’s death will have profound and far-reaching effects, in Muddy River and beyond.

In luminous prose, Yiyun Li weaves together the lives of these and other unforgettable characters, including a serious seven-year-old boy, Tong; a
crippled girl named Nini; the sinister idler Bashi; and Kai, a beautiful radio news announcer who is married to a man from a powerful family. Life in a world of oppression and pain is portrayed through stories of resilience, sacrifice, perversion, courage, and belief. We read of delicate moments and acts of violence by mothers, sons, husbands, neighbors, wives, lovers, and more, as Gu Shan’s execution spurs a brutal government reaction.

Writing with profound emotion, and in the superb tradition of fiction by such writers as Orhan Pamuk and J. M. Coetzee, Yiyun Li gives us a stunning novel that is at once a picture of life in a special part of the world during a historic period, a universal portrait of human frailty and courage, and a mesmerizing work of art.(less)

Hardcover, 352 pages

Published February 3rd 2009 by Random House (first published August 4th 2008)

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May 19, 2012 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Tough read. Almost impossible to rate. Did I (3) like or (4) really like this novel? No. I endured it. Do I think it (5) amazing? Yes, yes ... that I do.

It is, quite possibly, the most brutal, dispiriting, sad, anger-provoking, depressing novel I've ever read.

I feel as though this novel is trying to teach me so many things, but my lack of knowledge of China's history, specifically China's Cultural Revolution, is hampering me from understanding it fully. That's at the thematic, symbolic level. A...more

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May 20, 2012 jo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: east-asia

i've been trying to get away from writing a review of this book. i've been coming up with scenarios in which such writing is impossible. i have to walk the dog. i have to go to bed. there is too much distraction right now.

this is the story of the aftermath of an execution in a small provincial town (more a community than a town, really) in communist china. the narrator tells us that the historical period is the period that followed the cultural revolution, but since my knowledge of chinese hist...more

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Jennifer (aka EM) I'm running out the door, but briefly: I think the key difference here is that I see the point of this story as to tell a bigger story about the polit...more I'm running out the door, but briefly: I think the key difference here is that I see the point of this story as to tell a bigger story about the political system they were living under. It's not just about "human suffering plain and simple and inescapable." It is about human suffering and acts of a very specific type, brought about by living in a very specific context/time. I don't see how you can divorce these characters' behaviour and motivations from the political context that shaped them (or in which they are expressed). And if you do, and all this is just a story that could be about any people anywhere, then it loses a lot of its power to me.

But, I just don't believe that's what Yiyun Li is doing here -- it's too shallow a reading. This story wouldn't work if it was set on an Iowa farm in 1978, for example. The setting is a key choice that Yiyun Li made.

The whole point about Gu Shan - and my question - is that during the Cultural Revolution, she committed violent and heinous acts towards her parents, and was embraced as a revolutionary. Then (and here's where I get confused - after the Cultural Revolution? or not?), she commits a similarly violent and heinous act against Nini's mother, and she is labelled a counter-revolutionary and executed. There is no difference in what she did - (that part of my question was rhetorical) - both acts are violent and despicable and motivated by the same force. But one lands her in jail and executed. That's an important fact.

Why did Yiyun Li choose to have Teacher Gu experience a stroke and his behaviour become so contrary to what it was earlier? I'd say, because part of her point here is that how people act from one day to the next, what they think and believe, is irrelevant to the consequences they face under this system. You can be walking down the street one day murdering, raping and pillaging and be lauded a revolutionary hero. You can do the same thing the next day and be tortured and murdered by the state. Which is EXACTLY what Jialin and Kai were protesting.

Do you really think a cigar is just a cigar here? Why would a writer make these choices - what is she SAYING with these choices - it's not just that people have strokes and suffer and that their personalities change. It's not just that people "live, survive, are mean to each other, are lovely to each other." They are mean and lovely to each other in very specific ways, which entail huge risks and have unpredictable consequences of the type that those of us living in a democracy simply do not face. Ever.(less)
May 23, 2012 04:10pm

jo just got back into the door. let me think about it. you speak eloquently, as always.
updated May 23, 2012 05:56pm

Apr 02, 2009 Melani rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a very well written book. It was like being given the power to see into the minds of men and women. The pity was that their minds were so wracked and sickened that you found yourself reading faster and faster so that you could escape from them -- escape from the spaces in peoples minds and lives that were so intimate -- escape from a despair that was so cloying you could hardly tolerate it. I did not give this book four stars because some of the incidents in the novel were so graphic tha...more

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Feb 25, 2009 Cheryl rated it 4 of 5 stars

This story takes place back in the seventies. A time when China was dealing with the Tiananmen Square uprising.

The Gu family was like any other family. They lived good quiet lives in the town of Muddy River. That all changed ten years ago. The Gu’s daughter, Gu Shan, a free spirit was raised like anyone else in the beliefs of Communism and China’s leader, Chairman Mao. Shan started thinking for herself and renounced her beliefs in communism. Shan was taken away. That was ten years ago. During t...more

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Mar 04, 2009 Gina rated it 4 of 5 stars

An exquisite telling of an absolutely brutal story. The book begins on the day of the grisly execution of an allegedly counterrevolutionary woman in a small town in China two years after the death of Mao. It continues with the story of how several memorable townspeople are affected by the aftermath of this wrongful death. Do they protest, turn away, submit, betray? It doesn't seem to make a difference as they iron fist of tyranny seems to gradually tighten around each of them in turn, squeezing...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Stein rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels-historical, novels-reflective, culture-asian

The author Li has woven an intricate tapestry of the lives of small town northern Chinese in the 1970s, following the Cultural Revolution. It provides an accurate picture of the oppressive, dictatorial, subservient and brutal existence endured by those in high positions, as well as low. The traditional Chinese ways of ancestral and ghost worship, compliance to patriarchy, pride in recognized social status and perseverance and inventiveness in a subsistence of grinding poverty are intricately rel...more

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Sep 25, 2012 Regina Lindsey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In this debut novel The Vagrants opens on a day in 1979 when the people of Muddy River will attend the mandatory denunciation ceremony for a 28-year old counter-revolutionary, Shu Gan, whose crime was writing down her thoughts. While the book is set in China and the reader gets a glimpse into the Mao history and life in a Communist society, the subject matter is really more about human nature. The characters are rich and complex. There's aging Teacher Gu, who raised his daughter to read and thin...more In this debut novel The Vagrants opens on a day in 1979 when the people of Muddy River will attend the mandatory denunciation ceremony for a 28-year old counter-revolutionary, Shu Gan, whose crime was writing down her thoughts. While the book is set in China and the reader gets a glimpse into the Mao history and life in a Communist society, the subject matter is really more about human nature. The characters are rich and complex. There's aging Teacher Gu, who raised his daughter to read and think but is shocked that she could not remain obedient. THere's his wife who is expected to carry on this day as if nothing is happening. Afterall, we all die, right? There's old Mr. and Mrs. Hua, who've settled in Muddy River after dedicatied much of their lives to saving and raising abandoned baby girls. There's the phyically disabled Nini, at twelve years of age the oldest of six girls in her family and caregiver of the family. There's Bashi, son of a "hero" but who's regarded as lazy and undersirable by the community at large. There's the young country boy Tong who dreams of being a hero in the eyes of government. Finally, there's the lovely, radio announcer Kai and her husband Han, from a politically well-connected family. Each react to the execution of Gu Shan in different ways.

I will warn readers the book is heavy in tone. There is very llittle happiness found by any of the characters. It is also full of betrayal, typically by those in a relationship most of us find sacred. But, it is very well written and I look forward to reading more works by Li. One of my favorite passages, "For every poor soul who was dragged down by this, the two men contemplated, there would be another one up for a promotion, a balance of the social energy, one said, and the other nodded and added that, indeed, to climb up in this country, you'd have to use someone else as a stepping stone. Neither bothered to take up his own past, or both understood that to be safe in their age, they had had their share of bodies underneath their feet." (pg 219)

Li was born in China in 1972 and attended a denunciation ceremony as a very young girl as a school field trip, much like the one described in the book. (less)

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Sep 21, 2012 Book Concierge rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel is set in 1979 provincial China, at a time when the Democratic Wall Movement in Beijing was gaining momentum in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. As the book open the residents of Muddy River are preparing for the denunciation rally and execution of local counter-revolutionary Gu Shan. Several different family units are connected by this one woman: Teacher Gu and Mrs Gu (Gu Shan’s parents), the Huas (vagrant beggars who have taken in orphaned girls in the past), Bashi (a socio...more

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Aug 12, 2011 Caitlin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Clear-eyed portrayal of the humiliation and degradation of inhabitants of one village in 1970’s Communist China. Family life has completely broken down: the Party has replaced parents, and allegiance is only to oneself, by sacrificing others. Superstition lingers in the minds of the people – worry about ghosts, bad luck, and whether or not to kill your daughters. The most interesting paradox is that women were considered equal to men in Communist China, but daughters were still inferior and many...more

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Apr 25, 2010 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars

A novel of abject misery and the horrible things that desperate people do to each other when they're pushed. Is it one of the works of Cormac McCarthy? Perhaps Faulkner?

Nope! It's "The Vagrants" by Yiyun Li. Take nearly enough characters to stack a George RR Martin epic, put them in rural China shortly after the Cultural Revolution, sprinkle liberally with poisoned dogs, tattletale neighbors, guilt, repression, and pure asininity and you get The Vagrants.

I'm sure it paints a realistic picture...more

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May 12, 2009 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: china-and-chinese, stuff-i-would-read-again

A WRITER who was raised in one culture but writes in the language of another is a precious commodity for readers from the latter.

The writer is literally a translator of one culture into another: He is fully aware of the unique quirks of his birth culture that are alien, even incomprehensible, to his adopted one; yet because of this knowledge, he is also able to ensure that as little nuances as possible are lost in translation.

The Western world has been relatively lucky when it comes to attract...more

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May 02, 2009 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

(This review was originally published on The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2009/03/no-one-i...)

When I think of Beijing in 1998, I think of a worn-out train bound for a town fifty miles from the capital. Across from me sat a Chinese man in his late twenties who, for a while, would not meet my eyes. Only after the train began moving, the noise of the rails nearly deafening, did he lean forward across the little table that separated us and say, “English?”

I nodded, grateful and relieved to have someo...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Crystal rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book up at Walmart in the bargain bin. It looked like an interesting read so I bought it. That said, was it an interesting read? Yes. It was interesting, but at the same time, it was one of the most difficult novels I've ever read. I think the reason that I found it so difficult was the knowledge that this story played out in China then, and still does today. I remember hearing the story of the Chinese political prisoner who was imprisoned before the Olympics, the one Christian Bal...more

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Apr 09, 2009 Ms. Online added it

Shelves: 2009-winter-reviews

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT
Nisi Shawl

A Review of The Vagrants
By Yiyun Li
Random House

In the wake of China’s Cultural Revolution, wrecked lives did not simply right themselves and continue on as before. The Vagrants, the first novel by award-winning short-story author Yiyun Li, examines human flotsam caught in the backwater eddies of the fictional late-’70s provincial town of Muddy River. The book opens as the spring equinox dawns. Teacher Gu rises from bed reluctantly, anticipating his daughter’s exe...more A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT
Nisi Shawl

A Review of The Vagrants
By Yiyun Li
Random House

In the wake of China’s Cultural Revolution, wrecked lives did not simply right themselves and continue on as before. The Vagrants, the first novel by award-winning short-story author Yiyun Li, examines human flotsam caught in the backwater eddies of the fictional late-’70s provincial town of Muddy River. The book opens as the spring equinox dawns. Teacher Gu rises from bed reluctantly, anticipating his daughter’s execution for counterrevolutionary thoughts. He tries to come to terms with the inevitability of her death, calling to mind a larger context: the rhythms of the natural world. The denunciation and execution of former Red Guard Gu Shan are to take place on a day of balanced dark and light; the day after, the sun will shine a little longer on those still living, a difference “imperceptible perhaps to dull human eyes at first, but birds and worms and trees and rivers would sense the change.”

Merciless as nature, Li spares her readers not one telling detail: the bloodstained bandages covering the wounds where Gu Shan’s vocal cords have been cut and her kidneys scavenged by a Communist Party official; the tiny shack furnished with one chair, a cot and a tree stump where a tubercular intellectual conspires to redeem that unjust death; the myriad silences accompanying a former government news announcer to her grave. Yet this meticulousness enriches us with beauties both wild and mundane. Willow buds swell with “the best green of the year—clean, fresh, shining”; “white nameless flowers bloom all summer” in the meadows where female babies are abandoned to freeze in winter; a young girl feels “a small tickling sensation ... somewhere in her body that she had not known existed.” Li’s stark narrative echoes the devastating purity of the folk sayings that grace its flow, less adornment than illustration. Searching for a missing receipt to prove he has paid for the bullet that will kill his daughter, Teacher Gu tells himself it is “taking a walk with a ghost.” When Mrs. Hua, a street sweeper one step above beggary, recounts to her boss last night’s dream of nonexistent grandchildren, he replies with an aphorism: “A dream is as real as a blossom in the mirror or a full moon in the river.”

In a swirling panorama Li focuses closely on her characters, then pulls back to show the larger effects on Muddy River of Gu Shan’s political rise and fall, then dives again into the minutiae of daily lives: a blue plastic rattle left behind when a baby is removed from his politically suspect mother, a cone of flour and water meant to paste up notices of Gu Shan’s public execution and used instead to assuage the hunger of one of her victims. Caught up in a movement to rehabilitate the dead “counterrevolutionary,” townspeople are imprisoned and tortured when the central government retaliates. They have nothing to cling to but one another. Mr. and Mrs. Hua, onetime itinerants and the most obvious of the book’s vagrants, are swept with their newly adopted daughter away from their temporary mooring in the town; in their common cell, a sex criminal promises a confused man-child who denounced his neighbors that they will travel to hell together. Teacher Gu breaks curfew one evening and walks into the arms of those who will beat him senseless, “with the resolution to meet the water that would carry him away.” Which is all, sometimes, that anyone can do.

---
NISI SHAWL’S short-story collection Filter House (Aqueduct Press, 2008) was chosen by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the best books of 2008.
(less)

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Jun 23, 2010 Dora rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book. I'm particularly interested in this era of China, and in general I love reading fiction that takes place in a culture with extreme political change.

In some ways, this novel gave me a bit of what I was looking for- a portrait of life in an ever-changing cultural landscape, where attitudes and traditions all mean something new entirely.

But unfortunately, it was just far too bleak for me personally. I am not saying I need sugar-coating; many of my favorite books...more

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Apr 22, 2009 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is not one for the faint of heart, or easily depressed. In fact, despite its excellent prose and purpose, I probably would recommend it whole-heartedly to those readers who 1) are really interested in the social and political black hole of Communist China 2) really interested in the debilitating effects of a totalitarian state on its populace 3) like to remain in a state of constant depression.

On the other hand, given the author is of Chinese descent, and an Iowa Writer's Workshop grad...more

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Feb 23, 2011 Nancy Oakes rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

The Vagrants is Li Yiyun's first novel, set in the People's Republic of China in 1979 in a provincial town called Muddy River. China's Cultural Revolution is over and Mao has been dead for three years. Most of the action takes place between two executions -- the first that of Gu Shan. When she was fourteen, she had been a "fanatic believer in Chairman Mao and his cultural revolution," but then changed her mind as she got older, becoming an "adamant nonbeliever and a harsh critic of her generatio...more The Vagrants is Li Yiyun's first novel, set in the People's Republic of China in 1979 in a provincial town called Muddy River. China's Cultural Revolution is over and Mao has been dead for three years. Most of the action takes place between two executions -- the first that of Gu Shan. When she was fourteen, she had been a "fanatic believer in Chairman Mao and his cultural revolution," but then changed her mind as she got older, becoming an "adamant nonbeliever and a harsh critic of her generation's revolutionary zeal." She made the mistake of putting her doubts into a letter she wrote to her boyfriend, who turned her in to the authorities. For his action, he was allowed to join the army; she was put into prison, and eventually executed. But before her death, the townspeople turn out for her denunciation ceremony -- a circus-like atmosphere in which songs are sung, speeches are made and people, including schoolchildren, are shouting revolutionary slogans. The story goes on with the execution's aftermath and its effects on several people, including her mother and father and others in the town. It's a story about betrayals -- official ones like the one that sent Gu Shan to prison and the other, more personal ones people face in life, and a story about the uncertainties of living in a country where things change rapidly, creating uncertainty in the lives of the people.

There are several characters through whom the story passes, and rather than leave the story in the hands of one or two of these people, the author presents her story through a more omniscient viewpoint. Gu Shan's execution is a jumping-off point for the novel, and since the author gave her no voice of her own, her story is told through the eyes of others in little bits and pieces to be collected by the reader. Somewhere in their stories the real Gu Shan exists. These people range from the powerful to the poor, but all are looking for something more permanent in a situation where the political landscape that seems to be always changing, so that no one knows what the next day might bring. Not everyone sees things in terms of politics here; some people are just trying to survive, while others do their best after personal disappointments to get by; but inevitably, the truth is that no one is immune to the whims of the government, especially during this time period, when there's a great deal of political upheaval going on throughout the country. Not even the political higher-ups of the town are immune from the changing winds of Beijing:

"There were clearly two camps, both with significant representation in the central government and among party leaders. Were the leaflets in Muddy River the spawn of the democratic wall seven hundred miles away? And what should they do, which side should they take? -- the questions puzzled those people who had never worried over the lack of a meal, a bed or a job. Offices became minefields where one had to watch out for oneself, constantly defining and redefining friends, enemies, and chameleons who could morph from friends to enemies and then back again. With their fates and their families' futures in their hands, these people sleepwalked by day and shuddered by night."

The most interesting character in the novel is Teacher Gu, father of Shan, a rather confused and fatalistic sort of man who lives in a world largely defined through his nostalgia for times past, and whose advice has always been to stay small and remain unnoticed, even while events around him seem to spiral out of control.

The Vagrants is one of those books that has a lot of rave reviews but truthfully I didn't love it. It's not because of the subject matter; there are many books that describe different historical periods of the People's Republic in much more harrowing detail. Less characters and more of a focus might have tightened up this novel to make it flow better. It reads like a series of vignettes where the story drops off to be picked up later, and there are a number of diversions that often give the story more of a rambling quality. I understand that the author is trying to give the story more of a collective viewpoint, but it was a bit grating at times to be in the middle of a storyline and then have things shift.

I'd recommend this book to readers who are interested in historical fiction and who like books from authors like Lisa See. Li is a talented author, but if you want something more serious, there are several authors that write more intensely about the People's Republic -- I'd suggest authors more along the lines of Yu Hua, Su Tong, Yan Lianke or Bi Feiyu. (less)

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Oct 05, 2009 Alice Meloy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm so grateful for writers such as Yiyun Li who, through their novels, take us places we've never really known nor understood. In THE VAGRANTS, Li draws a Breugel-like picture of a small town in post-Maoist China where family and community relationships show the strains of life under the Cultural Revolution and the uncertainties that follwed. Teacher Gu and his wife collapse when their daughter is executed as a counterrevolutionary; 12-year old Nini deals with life as a cripple and the oldest o...more

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Mar 11, 2009 McKay rated it 3 of 5 stars

iyun Li, author of celebrated short-story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (whose title story was turned into a movie), says the plight of her first novel arose from questions she had regarding a real-life execution in post-Mao China. Questions like: Why wouldn't parents bury their only child after her killing?

The answers, like life and death in 1979 Muddy River, stem from a state of terror and broken humanity, of propaganda and quiet hope. Mostly, it's grim. Trash collectors rescue d...more iyun Li, author of celebrated short-story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (whose title story was turned into a movie), says the plight of her first novel arose from questions she had regarding a real-life execution in post-Mao China. Questions like: Why wouldn't parents bury their only child after her killing?

The answers, like life and death in 1979 Muddy River, stem from a state of terror and broken humanity, of propaganda and quiet hope. Mostly, it's grim. Trash collectors rescue discarded daughters, kidneys are torn from political prisoners, dogs die, and a sympathetic creep molests a deformed 12-year-old. As provincial bureaucrats attempt to maintain order and universal loyalty to the Communist party, however, dissenters appear from unexpected places. The Vagrants is a story about how these closeted free thinkers deal with their banal daily lives, as well as their families, neighbors, and work units. What brings them together, though unbeknownst to each other, is the execution of a reformed Red Guard, guilty of admitting doubt in her prison journals.

But this is not a hero story, nor a celebration of individuals who rose to fight the Party. It's a story of familial struggles between old rural traditions and the volatile new world of communism after Mao. It's unique in its details of life in a historically vilified era, both imagined and remembered by the author. Li was about seven years old at the time this novel takes place, and her childhood impressions of denunciation ceremonies, sibling rivalry, and social hierarchies elucidate a human element that keeps its tragic stories palatable.

Li came to the United States to study science at the University of Iowa, and only by chance ended up in a workshop in the country's best creative-writing department. She approaches writing without a sense of grandeur and without an agenda. As a result, The Vagrants is a sincere attempt to humanize a historical moment; without celebrating or condemning, it tells the tales of a small town facing an execution, and a huge country facing a new era.

- McKay McFadden
www.boldtype.com (less)

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Jun 14, 2011 Emma rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a book club read and from that point of view, one of the best I think we have read - even though I haven't rated it particularly highly here. We had one of the longest and most interesting discussions following reading this book that we have ever had; the majority of this was about the subject matter rather than the book necessarily, however. I know next to nothing about the 20th century history of China (or any other history of China for that matter) and this book was a really strong in...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Sam rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 3-women-authors, setting-china, setting-asia-east, 1-contemp-literary, child-teen-protag, read-2012, reviewed

This is not an easy book to read in the sense that the post-Mao Chinese village in which the characters live is brutal and depressing. The rhythm in Li’s storytelling, however, somehow kept me going. The complex main characters don’t make it easy for readers to love them or hate them. In one scene, they’re acting out a kindness yet in another scene, they’re exacting such cruelty; you feel as if you have them pinned down, and then they do something that astonishes you. The scope is small, focusin...more

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May 26, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read "The Vagrants" for a class on women's issues as seen through literature and film. Had I not needed to read it in order to participate in class discussion, I probably would have stopped reading it at some point. "The Vagrants" while beautifully well written, is a very difficult read. The story takes place in China right after the end of the Cultural Revolution and shows the interactions among an array of characters as they witness and react to a Denunciation Hearing just before a young wom...more

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Jul 24, 2009 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

The events in this book all take place over the course of a few days in the late 70s in a small village in rural China. It opens with a woman in her late twenties being put to death for "counterrevolutionary" activities. The novel's told in 3rd person omniscient, shifting between ten or so narrators in the town, ranging from the woman's parents, to an old classmate and friend, to a young pervert, to a disabled girl. The book has a very old-fashioned feel, and is really very intricately plotted....more

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Apr 15, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: may-june-2009

Reviewers were clearly impressed by The Vagrants, especially noteworthy because it is Li's first novel. They valued its memorable and nuanced characters, its simultaneous severity and humor, and the way Li creates moral ambiguity without diminishing the bravery and sacrifice of Chinese dissidents. The only complaint was that Li's portrayal of the misery of Muddy River can be somewhat overwhelming; readers "may grow numbed, or more strangely (and disturbingly), inured under its assault" (San Fran

...more

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May 13, 2012 Deb Harrison rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm reluctant to give books 5 stars, but I couldn't think of a reason not to for The Vagrants. Yiyun Li's writing and storytelling style are brilliant first of all, and the stories within stories and characters in The Vagrants are so compelling that you feel you are in the midst of them, and want to care for, fight, weep and hope with them.
The story follows the lives of several characters affected by the brutal execution of a 'counter revolutionary' by the repressive Chinese government in the la...more

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May 03, 2010 Christine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, books-i-own

I'm not sure how to describe what I felt about this book... I enjoyed it, but there seemed to be something lacking at the end, but perhaps that is just the enduring sadness of the characters.

This novel is engaging and captivating and yet very foreign; the time and place are so far removed for me that I had difficulty understanding a few characters and their motivations, specifically Bashi (八十). However, the glimpse into a very tremulous period in modern Chinese history and the people whom it af...more

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Aug 16, 2009 Pbwritr rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: foreign

Excellent book. Set in a small city in China, Muddy River, following numerous characters around during the course of just a couple of weeks in 1979, shortly after the Cultural Revolution ended. Gu Shan is being executed as a counterrevolutionary, and the actions of a number of people intersect each other, impact upon each other, and have mostly negative consequences. Deftly woven into the narrative is a clear-eyed view of life in the Communist state--public outhouses, tiny houses, starvation, be...more

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Mar 16, 2009 Mbarkle rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a book written in English, but set in village in China in the late 1970s. I'm skipping a plot summary, but the story basically deals with a group of mostly illiterate villagers, trying to deal with the effect of an oppressive political regime on their daily lives. It's a situation where people don't know who they can turn to or trust, which wreaks havoc in their personal lives and tears apart families.

The writing style is very simple and spare. It's easy to read, but behind the simplici...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Chensa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Bookclub---Lauren Nemroff reviews this for Amazon: “During the Cultural Revolution countless unspeakable acts went down in the otherwise unremarkable industrial town of Muddy River. Lovers betrayed lovers, children denounced their parents, and neighbors became sworn enemies. A few years later, the townspeople have convened at the public stadium to witness the execution of Gu Shan. A Red Guard leader in her youth, she has received the death penalty for her counterrevolutionary writings and unrepe...more

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Dec 08, 2010 Jesse rated it 3 of 5 stars

this was a readable book and contained all the elements of "literature" (i.e. realistic characters, meaningful interactions, controled and solid prose, etc.) yet yiyun li seems to be missing something with her first novel. she has the iowa writers workshop stamped all over her work, especially iowa's current international flavor (nam le, sarah shun-lien bynum, lan samantha chang, daniel alarcon, etc.), which in recent years has overtaken its white male alcoholic/mental breakdown school that rea...more this was a readable book and contained all the elements of "literature" (i.e. realistic characters, meaningful interactions, controled and solid prose, etc.) yet yiyun li seems to be missing something with her first novel. she has the iowa writers workshop stamped all over her work, especially iowa's current international flavor (nam le, sarah shun-lien bynum, lan samantha chang, daniel alarcon, etc.), which in recent years has overtaken its white male alcoholic/mental breakdown school that really put the workshop on the map (john cheever, richard yates, raymond carver, frank conroy). she has all the technical ability and even picked a great theme that is close to her heart (china and the effects of communism generally and the cultural revolution specifically), but she seems to be caught in a young writers trap of telescoped writing. what i mean by that is that her fictional world has trouble staying consistent: at first there is searing hunger that affects alot of the town's (called muddy river) ihanbitants, but by the end of the novel there's not a word about hunger. or vicious parents sudennly dissappear from the text only to be tangentially mentioned, given a line or two to let the reader know that the author hasn't forgotten about them. in doing this li forfiets what could have been some of the strongest scenes in the book and instead gives us a token sentence to wrap up a plot point. but even more so, it breaks the fictional spell and reminds the reader that they are reading a book - like seeing the palmed coin during a magicians trick, it can be really deflating.
the novel does contain some promise, bashi becomes a fascinating character and almost a hero toward the end of the novel, which is amazing considering he is introduced as a potential satutory rapist. li really works wonders with bashi as he is first seen as a free loader and shady character, and then revealed to be an innocent looking to be loved: it is quite the perspective shift. also nini, the deformed 12 year old, is very annoying when introduced (i, sad to say, as a reader, wanted bad things to happen to her because i disliked her so much and i'm not sure that's what li had in mind), but, by the end, she is seen as a true victim of the machinations of communism.
li also uses muddy river as a synecdoche for the whole of communist china which allows a standard length novel to take on a doorstopper like theme: the effects of authoritarian governments on the citizens they rule. and yi works this nicely but doesn't give you anything you don't expect (which i can't decide if this is the fault of the author or of tyrannical governments). but again this is why i gave it only three stars as i didn't take from it any new ideas/thoughts/views on the crushing effects of an authoritarian government on its own citizens. she does have potential for a great novel in the future, but as it stands, read some jhumpa lahiri, if you want finely-crafted, international flavor.(less)

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About Yiyun Li

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

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