I vaguely remember reading this book. It was really well written but even then I thought it felt too much like "trauma porn". Personally, I find repeated sexual abuse in fiction to be quite off putting.
I don't really mind so much that Yanigihara is a woman. The whole point of fiction is that writers imagine the lives of people who are different from themselves. But the book was so unrelentingly tragic. In that way, it fed into stereotypes that queer stories are inevitably tragic.
I agree—it’s beautifully written but exhausting in its misery. The issue isn’t that she imagined lives unlike her own, it’s that those imagined lives became the queer story mainstream readers embraced. When tragedy is the only note the culture amplifies, it stops feeling like empathy and starts feeling like expectation.
Oh, and until recently, Bomer wasn't the narrator of A Little Life. this was recently re-recorded in 2025 (the original narrator was exclusively available on Audible and it was Oliver Wyman).
I also have a suspicion that Hanya is queer but doesn't want to disclose her personal identity. I interviewed her a few years ago and tried to get her to talk about it. Her book 'To Paradise' isn't trauma porn but the middle section has an amazing depiction of gay men and their love lives that I can't imagine someone who is not an "insider" could write so well: https://www.audible.com/blog/hanya-yanagihara-on-why-our-longing-for-paradise-will-forever-disappoint
Good catch, Jerry. I’ve seen different versions of the story about who’s in that Hujar photo—part of me liked the tidy version I shared here. I came to A Little Life completely blind; had Audible not suggested it, I probably never would’ve picked it up—which says something about how it was being marketed. The switch to Matt Bomer only reinforces that. Whether Hanya meant to or not, the book found its audience as a gay story. I haven’t read her other work, but now you’ve got me curious.
Reading your interview, I suppose this is the part that infuriates me:
“Having said that, I think that there is no single representation of any community. If I write something from the perspective of an Asian woman, I have no more or less validity or legitimacy than anybody who’s writing from that perspective—including people who belong to those communities.”
To me, that sounds tone-deaf. The validity or legitimacy she dismisses would not be distributed evenly across authors. A handful of voices are permitted to cross boundaries freely, while others are still told to stay in their lane.
Totally. She's a slippery one. Brilliant minds know how to dodge better than others. I should also note: I have never read A Little Life. In fact, I actively avoided it when it came out because I've learned that, with a book with so much hype and adulation (this includes such books as Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), it's better for me to let that die down so I'm not knee-jerk reacting negatively.
But with Little Life, the repulsion by actual gay men to the book was so intense, I've stayed away even longer—especially since it was mainly young straight women who seemed have a kink for crying about Jude's abuses. So your critique feels especially spot on, but I can't say for myself since I still haven't read or listened. I have read plenty about it, including this excellent piece by Parul Seghal that seems to confirm all the trauma plot issues https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/the-case-against-the-trauma-plot
I haven't read it yet, but this Summer I saw A Little Life in a bookstore with another book next to it - Tin Man by Sarah Winman. It had a Staff Recommendation next to it basically saying read this instead of Little Life. Of course it had something witty underneath it saying half as much trauma and 75% shorter - something like that.
I vaguely remember reading this book. It was really well written but even then I thought it felt too much like "trauma porn". Personally, I find repeated sexual abuse in fiction to be quite off putting.
I don't really mind so much that Yanigihara is a woman. The whole point of fiction is that writers imagine the lives of people who are different from themselves. But the book was so unrelentingly tragic. In that way, it fed into stereotypes that queer stories are inevitably tragic.
I agree—it’s beautifully written but exhausting in its misery. The issue isn’t that she imagined lives unlike her own, it’s that those imagined lives became the queer story mainstream readers embraced. When tragedy is the only note the culture amplifies, it stops feeling like empathy and starts feeling like expectation.
Quick fact check note: That person in the Peter Hujar photo is not David Wojnarowicz (although they obviously had a close relationship). It's an unidentified friend. Hujar had a series of these photos https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/peter-hujar-s-orgasmic-man-at-masculinities-liberation-through-photography-barbican-art-gallery-barbican-centre/MAHbIOxna1WHgA?hl=en
Oh, and until recently, Bomer wasn't the narrator of A Little Life. this was recently re-recorded in 2025 (the original narrator was exclusively available on Audible and it was Oliver Wyman).
I also have a suspicion that Hanya is queer but doesn't want to disclose her personal identity. I interviewed her a few years ago and tried to get her to talk about it. Her book 'To Paradise' isn't trauma porn but the middle section has an amazing depiction of gay men and their love lives that I can't imagine someone who is not an "insider" could write so well: https://www.audible.com/blog/hanya-yanagihara-on-why-our-longing-for-paradise-will-forever-disappoint
Good catch, Jerry. I’ve seen different versions of the story about who’s in that Hujar photo—part of me liked the tidy version I shared here. I came to A Little Life completely blind; had Audible not suggested it, I probably never would’ve picked it up—which says something about how it was being marketed. The switch to Matt Bomer only reinforces that. Whether Hanya meant to or not, the book found its audience as a gay story. I haven’t read her other work, but now you’ve got me curious.
Reading your interview, I suppose this is the part that infuriates me:
“Having said that, I think that there is no single representation of any community. If I write something from the perspective of an Asian woman, I have no more or less validity or legitimacy than anybody who’s writing from that perspective—including people who belong to those communities.”
To me, that sounds tone-deaf. The validity or legitimacy she dismisses would not be distributed evenly across authors. A handful of voices are permitted to cross boundaries freely, while others are still told to stay in their lane.
Totally. She's a slippery one. Brilliant minds know how to dodge better than others. I should also note: I have never read A Little Life. In fact, I actively avoided it when it came out because I've learned that, with a book with so much hype and adulation (this includes such books as Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), it's better for me to let that die down so I'm not knee-jerk reacting negatively.
But with Little Life, the repulsion by actual gay men to the book was so intense, I've stayed away even longer—especially since it was mainly young straight women who seemed have a kink for crying about Jude's abuses. So your critique feels especially spot on, but I can't say for myself since I still haven't read or listened. I have read plenty about it, including this excellent piece by Parul Seghal that seems to confirm all the trauma plot issues https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/the-case-against-the-trauma-plot
I haven't read it yet, but this Summer I saw A Little Life in a bookstore with another book next to it - Tin Man by Sarah Winman. It had a Staff Recommendation next to it basically saying read this instead of Little Life. Of course it had something witty underneath it saying half as much trauma and 75% shorter - something like that.