Yiyun Li, a tenure-track instructor at Mills College in Oakland, was born in 1972 and grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution.. On the verge of getting her doctorate in physics in Iowa, she abruptly switched to studying writing, almost immediately winning awards.She published in prestige magazines such as the New Yorker and the Paris Review. She's won the Pushcart Prize and the Plimpton Prize for New Writers. Random House has signed her to a $200,000, two-book contract. Her first book, a story collection , A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, was published this fall to wide praise.
In the summer of 2004, Li petitioned the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to become a permanent resident of the United States. To approve her application for a green card, USCIS would need to agree that she was an artist of "extraordinary ability," defined in Title 8, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 204.5(h)(2) as "a level of expertise indicating that the individual is one of that small percentage who have risen to the very top of the field of endeavor." Now she has a problem: how to explain to the federal immigration bureaucracy what the word "extraordinary" means? Li doesn't know what she'll do if the appeal is denied. (Source: Bob Thompson, Washington Post, Dec. 23, 2005