Summary

Li reflects on how she appears to be a happy person but writes "about melancholy and loneliness and despondency" (153). Li does not believe that happiness and bleakness are mutually exclusive and believes instead that they can exist simultaneously within the same person. She claims not to intend to write about dark themes and to let her characters guide her. Interspersed throughout this entire chapter are quotes from other writers and people in Li's life. Some are anonymous such as a student from the Iowa Writer's Workshop and others are famous and successful such as Turgenev. These quotes prompt Li's reflection and writing throughout the chapter

Li believes that readers and writers should never meet and that "when a boy takes on life for a reader it is already dead for the writer" (154). She considers a writer who only wanted...