Leslie Li

PRAISE FOR THE FOREST FOR THE TREES

"Is Lucinda Wu a grave robber or a "grave gifter"? This genre-crossing novel proves uproarious and poignant as it tackles culture, love, family secrets, and their commodification, but also provocative."
— Gish Jen, author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon and The Resisters

The Forest for the Trees is a genre-bending treat, both playful and hard-hitting, funny and insightful. Leslie Li's characters wrestle with painful questions of loyalty—to each other, to previous generations, to nations and codes of conduct—while they garden and tap dance and give the exact wrong performance at a birthday dinner. This is a multigenerational family drama neatly tucked inside a swift-moving, delightful novel inside a movie inside a novel.
— Caitlin Horrocks, author of The Vexations

"In Leslie Li's deeply felt, tightly woven hybrid novel—part prose, part screenplay—a multi-generational Chinese-Czechoslovakian-American family in 1959 learns that sometimes the world has to fall apart in order to come back together again. If you've ever struggled to be true to yourself while also honoring your family, don't miss this book."
— Will Allison, author of Long Drive Home

"[Like] Gish Jen's Typical American and Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You, Leslie Li's moving novel probes the true complexity of relationships that dare to straddle conflicting loyalties and traditions. Although set more than fifty years ago, this innovative portrait of a Chinese-American family divided by race, ethnicity, culture, and traumatic history—but united by deep, if troubled, love—rings truer than ever in today's polarized world."

— Aimée Liu, author of the novel Glorious Boy

"Strong emotions and grand acts (both laudable and shameful) power The Forest for the Trees. The narrative compresses three generations of family history into one difficult year in the life of a Chinese-American family, whose members are struggling to locate themselves amid competing and conflicting cultural, economic, religious, and personal value systems."

— Debra Spark, author of the novel Discipline

"This book was such an intriguing read—I identified with all of the characters. The story speaks volumes about Chinese Immigrants landing on new soil, reluctant to embrace their new environment. It mirrors the many family dynamics I grew up with as an American-born, first-generation child watching my friends' immigrant parents slowly assimilating through their children who were born in the landed country. The scene with Nai-nai yelling to stop the car came right out of my own experience. Just like Nai-nai, my mother yelled at the top of her lungs to stop the car in the middle of our Seattle neighborhood when she saw—growing wild, bountiful and free—gow gay!!! Instead of the Land of the Gold Mountain (Gim San), for her, America could have been the Land of Abundant Gow Gay! A thoroughly enjoyable read."

— Lori Tan Chinn, actor, "Kung Fu Panda 4" and "Awkwafina Is Hangin' With Grandma"

Praise for Daughter of Heaven

"This delectable book will satisfy multiple appetites: for compelling family saga, for heartfelt coming-of-age story, and for irresistible Chinese dishes."

— Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award winning author of The Friend

"Leslie Li's writing is brilliantly fresh, direct, and unabashed. Deftly wise and ironic, Daughter of Heaven takes us on an unforgettable, unflinching journey of food and remembrance."

— Diana Abu-Jaber, author of The Language of Baklava and Crescent

"…goes far beyond the show-and-tell character of standard memoirs… the story of the author's personal journey from the young multi-ethnic girl growing up in New York who would have happily shed any connection to her Chinese roots, to the mature woman who seeks to connect to her ancestry on a much deeper level."

— San Francisco Chronicle

"Like an amuse-bouche, each vignette in Li's memoir tantalizes with a taste of Li's life as a Chinese-American in suburban New York… the book is more than satisfying, and the mythical ending (Li recounts a fable of her own) is haunting."
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Praise for Bittersweet

"Taken as history alone, this is a fascinating book… But it is also an absorbing novel, full of private frustrations and excursions to the market; philosophical mornings in the garden and difficult relatives; intimate cups of tea and the satisfying, gradual evolution of a character."

— The New Yorker

"A panoramic whirl through Chinese history in a first novel inspired by a Chinese grandmother who was granted that most ambiguous of wishes — to live in interesting times."

— Kirkus Reviews

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Leslie Li's new book The Forest for the Trees is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press on September 20, 2024. Alternating between novel and screenplay formats, it is a dark comedy about a clash of cultures and generations, a biracial coming-of-age story, and a psychological thriller about inherited trauma. Set in 1959 suburban New York City, the book follows a Chinese businessman who loses his livelihood and is replaced by his Caucasian American wife as sole breadwinner, creating a cascade of domestic crises that mirrors the Cold War raging between the United States and communist China. Her first book Bittersweet (Tuttle Publishing), an historical novel, won praise from The New Yorker and The New York Times. Her culinary memoir, Daughter of Heaven (Arcade Publishing) received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Just Us Girls (Four Seasons Press) is the official companion book to The Kim Loo Sisters—her feature-length documentary about the first Asian American act to star in Broadway musical revues—which was one of the five finalists in The Paley Center for Media DocPitch Competition. Her personal essays and feature articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Gourmet, Travel & Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Saveur, Modern Maturity, Garden Design, Dorothy Parker's Ashes, and elsewhere.

Li has taught fiction and memoir writing workshops at Skidmore College, Manhattanville College, SUNY Purchase, The New York Open Center, The Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA, The Asian-American Writers' Workshop, and Paris Writing Workshops in Paris, France.

She has received grants from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, the Chinese Heritage Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, and the Freeman Foundation. Her work has been supported by New York Foundation for the Arts and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Fiction, and by residencies at Fondation Ledig-Rowohlt in Lavigny, Switzerland, Ledig House, Millay Colony for the Arts, and The Cottages at Hedgebrook.

Praise for Daughter of Heaven

Praise for Bittersweet

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