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“Thank god he wasn't a writer, or he'd have nothing to write about.” - Hanya Yanagihara
Luckily enough for all of us, Hanya Yanagihara has plenty to write about, and the skill and craft to do it. Writer of one of the most sensational and acclaimed books of the past ten years, A Little Life, she is a bestselling author and winner of numerous highly competitive writing awards. With her first novel being published in 2013, Hanya Yanagihara is a relatively new face in the literary scene, but, as you’ll come to see throughout this article, she is certainly a formidable writer and a strong presence in the literary world.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at Hanya Yanagihara’s background, writing style, three novels, influence, and writing advice, so that by the end we might have a greater understanding of just who this significant writer is and what we can take from her craft and work.
A Brief History
Hanya Yanagihara was born in Los Angeles in 1974 to a mother from Seoul and a father from Hawaii. Her childhood was spent often on the move, living in five different states across the country before graduating from Punahou School in Honolulu and attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, for an undergraduate degree in English Language & Literature. Yanagihara has said that her interest in literature and writing was sparked by her father introducing her to significant writers like Anita Brookner, Iris Murdoch, and Barbara Pym during her childhood, and this affinity for literature and writing stayed with her throughout her academic and professional life. This can easily be seen in how, after graduation in 1995, she moved to New York City and pursued work as a publicist, writing and editing for Condé Nast Traveler for many years and writing fiction on the side.
Her first book, The People in the Trees, was published in 2013 to critical success, with many calling it one of the best books of the year, and it served to establish Yanagihara as a writer outside of journalistic work. Two years later, in 2015, the book Yanagihara is arguably best known for, A Little Life, was published to extreme acclaim, shocking herself, her editor, and her agent, all of whom expected the book to not sell well. Instead, A Little Life was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the 2016 Women's Prize for Fiction, and was the winner of the 2015 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and led to Yanagihara being selected as a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Fiction.
The same year she found independent success with A Little Life, Yanagihara left her long-standing job at Condé Nast and took up a position at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, much to the shock of her peers in the publishing industry. She’s stated that she’s always been an editor full-time and a fiction writer in her free time, and she has no intentions of doing it any other way in the future; today, thanks to her willingness to do things her own way, she is Editor-in-Chief of T. Her junior novel, To Paradise, was published in January of 2022, reaching number one on the New York Times best seller list, and further cementing her place as a formidable, talented, and original writer.
Writing Style
Hanya Yanagihara is known for her distinctive and immersive writing style often described as intense, emotionally charged, and introspective. In her books, she often delves deep into the psychological and emotional landscapes of her characters, exploring complex relationships and the human condition with a tact and originality that would be extremely difficult to replicate by any other writer. She’s also been highly praised for her ability to take long-standing or well-established motifs and themes and turn them into something never seen before, her three novels being exemplifiers of all of these foundational aspects of her style.
A Little Life
A Little Life, published in 2015, follows the lives of four friends — Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Malcolm Irvine, and JB Marion — who have recently graduated from college and moved to New York City to pursue their careers. The narrative follows the enduring friendships among the four characters as they navigate their careers and personal lives, providing support for each other through various challenges along the way. Jude, the central character, is a brilliant and mysterious lawyer with a traumatic past who, over the course of the novel, achieves significant success in his legal career, becoming a respected lawyer; his personal life, however, is marred by ongoing struggles and the lasting impact of his childhood abuse. Interwoven with the present narrative are flashbacks that gradually unveil the extent of Jude's suffering during his childhood, providing insight into the source of his physical and emotional pain, and giving context for Jude's difficulty in forming and maintaining intimate connections.
As the story spans several decades, readers witness the characters' evolving relationships and personal growth, along with their reactions to and reckonings with repeated tragedies and hardships that become integral to the plot. Ultimately, the novel concludes with reflections on the enduring nature of friendship and the profound effects of trauma on an individual's life as the characters grapple with the impact of their shared history and the challenges that time has brought.
The novel primarily circulates around the themes of trauma, friendship, and identity, with each character individually grappling with all of these aforementioned themes. The bonds of friendship among the four main characters are deeply explored, especially how their relationships evolve over the years along in the face of life's challenges. Questions of identity, self-worth, and the search for meaning are also central to the novels’ progression and characters as well, with each character struggling to come to grips with their own sense of identity and purpose.
Today, A Little Life is popularly known as one of the saddest books of the twenty-first century, being extremely emotionally intense and garnering a cult-like following as a result. The novel has been widely awarded and praised, especially in regards to its detailed characterizations and very in-depth exploration of extremely heavy subject matter, and much of the acclaim for the book has come in regards to the skillful way Yanagihara dealt with these subjects. It is, by far, the book Yanagihara is best known for.
The People in the Trees
The People in the Trees, published in 2013, is a fictional memoir of Dr. Abraham Norton Perina, renowned scientist and researcher, and the recounting of his experiences in the Micronesian island nation of Ivu'ivu in the 1950s. The story is framed as an account of his life, his scientific achievements, and the events leading to his controversial legacy, and was heavily inspired by real-life scientist Daniel Carleton Gajdusek.
In the novel, Dr. Perina and his colleague Dr. Tallent embark on an expedition to Ivu'ivu to study the native flora and fauna. During their exploration, however, they encounter a reclusive tribe known as the Dreamers, who are immune to a certain type of turtle meat that causes a deadly disease, leading the scientists to a breakthrough discovery. The doctors realize that the Dreamers' immunity is linked to the consumption of a rare turtle species, and Dr. Perina isolates a substance from the turtle meat, believing it to have miraculous healing properties. This discovery earns him acclaim in the scientific community.
However, as the researchers interact with the Ivu'ivu people, cultural clashes emerge, with the scientific community's intrusion into the traditional ways of the island raising ethical questions about exploitation, colonialism, and the consequences of Western influence on indigenous cultures, as well as about Dr. Perina's moral choices and the ethical implications of his scientific pursuits. By the end of the novel, Dr. Perina's reputation is tarnished and he faces legal charges related to his activities on Ivu'ivu, including allegations of sexual misconduct with adopted children from the island, and the trial and its aftermath reveal disturbing aspects of his character and actions.
In all, the novel is built upon exploring complex themes regarding scientific ethics, cultural clash, and the consequences of exploration and discovery, leaving readers with complex moral questions about cultural imperialism and the consequences of unchecked ambition. Today, The People in the Trees is regarded as a thought-provoking novel for the interrogation of these themes that it undertakes.
To Paradise
To Paradise, published in 2022, is Hanya Yanagihara’s third and most recent novel. It takes place in a fictional version of New York City, and is cut into three sections, set in 1893, 1993, and 2093 respectively. The novel primarily follows two characters, David Bingham and Charles Griffith, who, while they go by the same names in each of the three time periods, are vastly different characters in each section.
In the section set in 1893, David Bingham is a twenty-seven year old descendant of one of the founders of the “Free States,” which serves as an alternate reality of the United States. The Free States notably permit and accept same-sex marriage, which is integral to David’s life, as when he is introduced to Charles Griffith, an older tradesmen, they pursue each other with the goal of being married. However, around this same time of meeting Charles, David meets a piano teacher, Edward Bishop, and the two quickly fall into a love affair that is short-lived when Edward leaves New York City to return home. With Edward gone, David enters into the courting process with Charles, but upon Edward’s unexpected return, David cuts Charles off abruptly, and the two decide to run away to California together with the hopes of running a silk farm. However, when David’s grandfather is told of these plans, he reveals that he has investigated Edward, and knows him to be a con-man that seduces wealthy men. Still, David goes through with the plans, being disowned.
The section set in 1993, against a backdrop of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in New York City, follows a new version of the man named David Bingham, now a twenty-five year-old paralegal who is a descendant of Hawaiian royalty, living with a new version of Charles Griffith, an older lawyer with wealth under his belt. David’s ancestry is kept a secret from Charles, and in a lengthy flashback to David’s father, it explains how the family was involved with the Hawaiian independence movement with the goal of restoring the monarchy, which was ultimately unsuccessful and deeply straining to his relationships with his wife and son.
The final section, set in 2093, follows a new man named Charlie Griffith in a version of America that has been ravaged by pandemics and plunged into a fascist state. Charlie is a childhood survivor of one of the pandemics, and has been physically and emotionally scarred by his experiences. The section follows letters from Charlie’s grandfather, Charles Griffith, which detail various difficult experiences throughout his life.
All three sections are laced together through the common themes that they share, including race, longing, and intergenerational relations, but despite To Paradise’s debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, it has been critiqued as less powerful and skillfully done as opposed to Yanagihara’s earlier work. Nonetheless, the book serves as a poignant challenge of the modern conceptions of the US, as well as thought-provoking in regards to the themes it circulates, remaining a popular work of hers.
Influence
Hanya Yanagihara's writing has left a lasting impact on readers who have been moved by the emotional depth and intensity of her work. She has been praised as being extremely skilled at handling emotions and difficult, complex themes in her work, and she stands as a shining example of how to approach these things for other writers. As a prominent Asian-American female writer, she has also helped pave the way for other minority writers to rise to prominence on the American literary stage, as well as serving as a prominent example for taking the path less traveled and making your own way in your career even if it goes against the grain.
Writing Advice
Yanagihara has offered several key pieces of writing advice that she takes to heart when working on her own writing in written interviews. To her, “Writing should be indulgent: you should take big risks on the page, you should make big mistakes, you should be excessive at times. I let myself do as a writer what I probably would be less likely to allow as an editor.” In other words, don’t be afraid to let yourself off the leash! And even if the risks you take don’t work out, Yanagihara, and all other authors, know they can rely on their agent and editor to reel them in when needed.
In terms of finding real-life inspiration and a basis for your ideas, Yanagihara believes “as a fiction writer, you can never observe enough the rhythms of how humans move through the world, how they possess their own bodies, how they say and don’t say things.” People-watch as much as you can! There is much to be taken — so much — from the real people and world around you. In fact, not taking inspiration from these places can remove your writing from reality to a degree, and give it less of an edge when it comes to authenticity.
Overall, take risks, and keep an eye out for inspiration in the real world. You’ll probably be surprised at all the positives that come from it!
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