History can be manipulated, whitewashed and rewritten, but people who have lived in history all have their stories, which no single dictator or censor can rob. Memories, kept in stories, keep history alive. And who, among American writers, is a fiercer and braver keeper of the memories that have made America the country it is today, in the most beautiful and powerful language?

But not everyone sees the relevance of history. The desire to forget history seems universal, and one sees people with such agendas, in America and in China.

My earlier books, mostly set in China, have led to some readers to send me furious emails. A novel set in the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution especially touched some nerves. “What right do you have to write about events that occurred before you were a grown-up?” people demanded to know. (I was 4 years old when the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976.)

Once, at my local bookstore, an impassioned woman from Beijing said how much my writing hurt her pride. “Yes, the Cultural Revolution is in our history, but why not write something that makes us feel great about China?” Another time, at an American college, a young man from China asked, “Why do you have to write about the dark side of the country instead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics to make us feel proud?”

Both times I asked my questioners: “Would you also go to Toni Morrison and say to her: ‘You were born after slavery was abolished, so why do you have to hold onto that history and write about it? Why can’t you write something about a culturally and racially integrated and harmonious America to make Americans feel great and proud?’”

They might or might not have given a sensible answer. But that is hardly my concern. In “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I am,” a 2019 documentary, she says something that makes any writer’s doubt about his or her independence a dispensable part of the career: “History has always proved that books are the first plain on which certain battles are fought.”

No one had the right to tell Toni Morrison what to believe and what to write. No one should have that right over me, either.

She gives and continues to give many minds the necessary space to exist, and to expand. I am not alone in my debt to her.

Yiyun Li is a novelist, short story writer and an essayist. Her most recent book is “Where Reasons End,” a novel.

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