Yiyun Li on Tang

My favorite writer of the year in a small gem discovered in a book of small gems.

from "Orange Crush"
Yiyun Li
in Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table (ed. Amanda Hesser)

Even though Tang was the most expensive fruit drink available, its sales soared. A simple bottle cost seventeen yuan, a month's worth of lunch money. A boxed set of two became a status hostess gift. Even the sturdy glass containers that the powder came in were coveted. People used them as tea mugs, the orange label still on, a sign that you could afford the modern American drink. Even my mother had an empty Tang bottle with a snug orange nylon net over it, a present from one of her fellow schoolteachers. She carried it from the office to the classroom and back again as if our family had also consumed a full bottle.

In addition to the delightful essay from which this is excerpted, there is a superb piece by George Saunders-- "The Absolutely No-Anything Diet"--and writing from Billy Collins, Tom Perrotta, Chang-rae Lee, James Salter, and Ann Patchett, among others.