Yu Lihua

Yu Lihua 于梨華
Yu Lihua in 1964
Born	(1929-11-28)28 November 1929[1] Ningbo, Zhejiang, Republic of China[1]
Died	30 April 2020(2020-04-30) (aged 90) Gaithersburg, Maryland, U.S.
Occupation	Writer
Language	Mandarin Chinese
Nationality	Taiwan[1]
Alma mater	National Taiwan University (BA) University of California, Los Angeles (MA)
Notable works	"又見棕櫚" (Again the Palm Trees) "梦回清河" (Dreaming of the Green River) "考验" (The Task)
Notable awards	Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award, 1956 Ch'ia Hsin Literary Award, 1967
Spouse	Vincent O'Leary, Chih-Ree Sun
Children	Lena Sun, Eugene Sun, Anna Sun
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	于梨華
Simplified Chinese	于梨华
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Yú Líhuá

Yu Lihua (Chinese: 于梨華, 28 November 1929 – 30 April 2020)^[2] was a Taiwanese writer who wrote over thirty works—including 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 U.S. 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.