You can write about a country without taking a stand, but you cannot write about a country without noting that there's history, and that there's politics going on. To me, that's the same if you write about America. You don't have to write about politics, but the politics have to be present in the characters.
Yiyun LiMrs. 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.
Yiyun LiSome people in China don't look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end.
Yiyun LiThere are people who are willing to work within the system, and people who don't want to work with the system at all.
Yiyun Li