Launching a career as a novelist seems like an impossible dream to many ― let alone doing so in a second or third language. But that’s exactly what Yiyun Li did after she graduated from college, moving from Beijing to the U.S. to study immunology at the University of Iowa; once there, she wound up honing her fiction-writing skills at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

對許多人來說,要做一名職業小說家似乎就像一個不可能的夢想,更不用說用第二種語言或第三種語言來寫小說了。但這正是李翊雲所從事的工作。大學畢業后,她從北京來到美國愛荷華大學學習免疫學。一到那兒,她就興奮地來到享有盛譽的愛荷華作家工作室訓練自己的小說寫作技巧。

In a poignant essay for The New Yorker, Li, now the acclaimed author of several novels and short story collections written entirely in English, meditates on what leaving Chinese behind and embracing a new language has meant for her:

如今,李翊雲已創作了幾部完全用英語寫成的小說和短篇故事集,而她也成為了備受歡迎的作家。她曾在《紐約客》上刊載了一篇深刻的文章,在文中思考放棄漢語,使用一門新的語言對她來說意味著什么:

Li writes that although she grew up in China, she’s only written professionally in English ― a fact that has caused some surprise and confusion. Though she notes it would be easy to assume that she left her home language for political reasons, as Vladimir Nabokov did, she delves into the thicket of personal history and emotional turmoil that motivated her. “Like all intimacies, the intimacy between one and one’s mother tongue can be comforting and irreplaceable,” she writes, “yet it can also demand more than what one is willing to give, or more than one is capable of giving.”

李翊雲寫道,雖然她在中國長大,但她依然只用英語進行專業寫作,而這一事實也使一些人覺得驚訝和困惑。雖然她表明,人們可能很容易認為她是因為政治原因才放棄母語的,就像弗拉基米爾·納博科夫所做的那樣,但她深入探究了那些激勵她的個人經歷以及情緒波動中的錯綜復雜。“就像所有的親密關系,一個人和其母語之間的親密可能會使人得到慰藉,且這種親密是不可替代的,”她寫道,“但這可能比一個人愿意給予,或者能夠給予的,需要的更多。”