Yu Lihua (Chinese: 于梨華, 28 November 1929 – 30 April 2020)[2] was a Chinese writer who wrote over thirty works—novels, short stories, newspaper articles and translations—over sixty years. She is regarded as "one of the five most influential Chinese-born women writers of the postwar era and the progenitor of the Chinese students' overseas genre." She wrote primarily in Chinese, drawing on her experience as a Chinese émigré in postwar America. She was celebrated in the diaspora for giving voice to what she called the "rootless generation"—émigrés who had left for a better life but remained nostalgic for their homeland.
She was more than a successful writer, but a bridge, a cultural ambassador between China and the US. In 1975, she was one of the first individuals to be invited back to China after relations between the two countries were re-opened. Her work, which until then had been blacklisted in China, began to focus on life in China. Through sponsorship of scholarly exchange programs, her column in China's People's Daily newspaper, and radio broadcasts on the Voice of America, she educated both the American and Chinese public about life in each other's countries.
Yu was born in Ningbo, Zhejiang in 1929 and moved to Taiwan in 1948 during the KMT-CCP Civil War (1945-1949). She attended National Taiwan University, where she graduated with a degree in history in 1953. That year, Yu emigrated to the United States and enrolled in the school of journalism at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1956, even though she had failed UCLA's English proficiency exam and was turned away from their literature program, she won the coveted Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award, with her story "The Sorrow at the End of the Yangtze River."[3][4] (杨子江头几多愁). She received her master's degree in history in 1956.[citation needed]
After UCLA, Yu wrote several pieces in English, which were all rejected by American publishers. Not to be stopped, she returned to writing in Chinese and began her long writing career in earnest. In 1967, her breakout novel, "Again the Palms," (又見棕櫚, 又見棕櫚) won Taiwan's prestigious Ch'ia Hsin Award for best novel of the year. She continued to write into her late eighties.
Yu taught Chinese language and literature at the University at Albany, State University of New York from 1968 to 1993. She continued her writing career throughout her time at SUNY. She was instrumental in starting exchange programs that brought many Chinese students to the campus.
In 2006, Yu received an honorary doctorate from Middlebury College.
Yu was married to physics professor Chih Ree Sun, with whom she had three children: daughters Lena Sun, Eugene Sun, and Anna Sun. After their divorce, Yu married University at Albany president Vincent O'Leary. After O'Leary's retirement, they moved to San Mateo in 1997. They moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland in 2006.
