Today, I attended the writing workshop. Today窶冱 speaker was Yi Yun Li, from China. She came to the United States in 1996, now she is teaching writing at University of Iowa.

At first, she read a story 窶廢xtra,窶� published in 2003 on the magazine 窶弋he New Yorker.窶�
Here is my summary; an old woman, 51, left the company which she worked for a long time. Since she had nothing to do for the rest of her life, in accordance with her friend窶冱 advice, she got married to an old sick widower. However, because his disease was Alzheimer, he sometimes forgets everything. When she tried to take a bath with him, he doesn窶冲 recognize her as his wife and told 窶弩ho are you?窶� After taking bath, unfortunately, he died by accident. Thanks to his relatives, she was able to get new job; dorm mother at a private school. Many 窶徨ich窶� children go to there, so that her life became well off. In addition, she fell in love with a 6-year old boy. She did everything for him and enjoyed life with him. But he, at last, doesn窶冲 like her anymore because of the trouble concerning stealing socks. She tried to fix the relationship, but she couldn窶冲; she could not meet his 窶彿mpossible窶� request. Finally, she was fired. She still keeps the socks that remind her of the memories with boys.

After the author窶冱 reading, the question time was provided. She was originally a native speaker of Chinese, but she came to the States to get a PhD degree. She took some classes and learned the writing. Her teacher encouraged her to writing, then, she started to work as a writer. Now, she has a writing class at the University of Iowa.

Her fiction story is totally based on her 窶彿magination.窶� So does this story. Most of the information that told in this story emanate from her imagination, she said. However, she also writes non-fiction story. It is based on her own life or experience. She, as a writer, focuses on how does she tell the story and move the audience. She seemed to make a distinction between these two.

She also talked about revising the essay. This essay mainly consists of two parts; marriage and school. However, originally there was an episode of heroine in between. But the editor of the magazine pointed out that it doesn窶冲 窶彷it窶� to those two, so that she got rid of it. The concept of 窶彷it窶� seemed to be important to me.

According to her experience, her first language of writing is English. That was kind of surprising for me. Although she still thinks in Chinese many times and speaks Chinese to her husband, once she starts to write something in English, the thoughts come up to her mind in English. She doesn窶冲 translate Chinese into English most of the time. Certainly, I have had this kind of experience since I came here occasionally. It is hard to explain, but the words or phrases occur to me suddenly. However, this is still sort of difficult for me. I thought continuous thinking would contribute to the fluent writing or speaking. As her experience of the second language of English was a good implication for me.