Analysis Of Yiyun Li s A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers

Yiyun Li’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers has a recurring theme among its protagonists. Several characters have not met certain emotional needs which leaves them searching for ways to meet these needs wherever possible. Oftentimes, characters enter a one-sided relationship and give themselves completely to a person with nothing in return because it fulfills whatever needs the character has. These relationships are most evident in â€Å"Extra† and â€Å"A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.† In â€Å"Extra,† Granny Lin’s emotional deficit comes from her lack of relationships throughout her life. Her whole life she was never married, never had any children, and cooped up in a factory all day. After Granny lin was forced to retire, Auntie Wang arranged†¦show more content†¦The one-sidedness of the relationship is physical as well. Granny Lin looks out for Kang by supplying him with socks to save him embarrassment (Li 19). The way Granny Lin describes her relationship with Kang also shows how she has been deprived of romantic love her whole life. She â€Å"wonders if this is the love she missed in her younger years, hand and hand with a dear boy† and in the closing lines of the story she calls her time with Kang â€Å"her brief love story† (Li 18, 22). While I concede that Granny Lin’s relationship with Kang is problematic given the age difference, I contend that, knowing what the reader knows about Granny Lin’s lonely past, the relationship takes on a new light. The life Granny Lin led prior to her factory retirement left her emotionally starved and put her romantic and emotional desires in a state of dormancy. These buried and dormant desires were awoken by Old Tang, the object around which her feelings were able to manifest. After Tang’s death, those feelings may have left Granny Lin feeling even more empty because now she was aware of them but had nobody to love. Her relationship with Kang arose because they were both the most vulnerable in the school. She was vulnerable due to her emotional and romantic cavities, while Kang was vulnerable because of his familial issues. Some might call Granny Lin’s love for Kang predatory, but it comes