Things in Nature Merely Grow

A National Book Award finalist, Things in Nature Merely Grow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is Li’s searing memoir of survival and loss, after both of her sons died by suicide. Li, a professor of creative writing and director of the program, does not write of conventional grief or finding resolution and consolation. Instead, she traces how activities like writing, music, and the natural world became ways of remaining in life, of continuing to think, feel, and love even in the aftermath of such immense tragedy. A profoundly intimate and personal story, this book is an account of grief not merely as something to be overcome, but something experienced and lived alongside reality itself.