Winnie M Li’s “WHAT WE LEFT UNSAID” and California Book Tour!

WHAT WE LEFT UNSAID

By Winnie M Li

Excerpt from p.102 – 103

In this passage, Bonnie and Alex, two Taiwanese-American sisters in their 40s, are sharing a hotel room on a cross-country road trip. They stop to reflect upon their mother.

‘I guess Mom must have been like that with us. Like, we were her whole purpose or living?’

‘Yeah,’ Bonnie answers after a moment, releasing Alex from the hug. ‘And then we all moved away.’

They sit side by side, stewing equally in their filial guilt.

‘But honestly, her anxiety, all that worrying about us?’ Alex offers this up, almost as an excuse. ‘I couldn’t take it. I mean, it was suffocating.’

Bonnie, as ever, tries to defend their parents. ‘Yeah, but they were young. They were raising kids in a new country with no family around, and not much money. It must have been hard.’ She pauses. ‘You know, after they moved here, Mom only got to see her own mom once again in her lifetime.’

Alex looks at her sister, aghast. How had she not known that?

‘Grandma came over to help out after I was born,’ Bonnie continues. ‘But Mom never felt like she had enough money to fly back to Taiwan to visit. And then when she did, it was decades later, for her mom’s funeral.’

‘Oh, Mom…’ Alex feels a belated sorrow for the grandmother she never knew, for what her own mother had to give up. For the personal histories she has never bothered to learn.

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Internationally acclaimed novelist Winnie M Li will be launching her third novel, WHAT WE LEFT UNSAID, on a California book tour in August. Join her for events in Long Beach on Sunday, Aug 17 (4pm, Bel Canto Books at KUBO LB), San Francisco on Thursday, Aug 21 (7pm, Bookshop West Portal, with Grace Loh Prasad), Palo Alto on Saturday, Aug 23 (4pm at Books, Inc., with Rowena Chiu) or Pasadena on Monday, Aug 25 (7pm, Vroman’s Bookstore with Naomi Hirahara) for an intriguing conversation about her latest book, which has been described as ‘Heartbreaking, beautiful, and confronting’ (Sarah Winman, STILL LIFE).

All events are free to attend, but book your tickets in advance (linked above).

WHAT WE LEFT UNSAID has been lauded by Kirkus Review, as ‘a novel that embraces and questions the lure of Americana.’ It follows estranged Taiwanese-American siblings on an unpredictable road trip down Route 66 — and through a divided America. Originally from Southern California, the middle-aged Chu siblings are en route to visit their ailing mother, but on the way, they learn more about themselves and their own country than they expected.

Winnie’s previous novel COMPLICIT was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, while her debut DARK CHAPTER won The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize 2017, was translated into ten languages, and has just been re-issued in a new 2025 edition. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham in the UK, but has family roots of her own in Southern California.