Stanford Student Christina Li Makes Her Literary Debut with “Clues to the Universe”

Christina Li first got the idea for what would become her debut novel shortly after she graduated from high school. Having created stories and characters since middle school, she knew that she wanted to explore the intensity of those years in her new book Clues to the Universe, which was released on January 12 by Quill Tree Books. “Middle grade is so different from any other age,” Li noted, adding that the ups and downs of those years often stay with people for a lifetime.

Clues to the Universe centers on Rosalind “Ro” Ling Geraghty, a mixed-race Chinese American girl growing up in 1980s California who is fascinated by space and all things NASA. Ro gets her intense interest in space from her father, with whom she spent hours building a model rocket of her own. After Ro’s father dies unexpectedly, she has to learn how to navigate a new school and new friends as she and her mother adapt to their new lives. At her new middle school, Ro meets Benjamin “Benji” Burns. While Benji isn’t as into science as Ro is, he does have a secret of his own when it comes to his long-absent father. Ro quickly becomes determined to help unite the two.

The FBomb had the chance to talk to Li about her debut novel, her own love of science, and why more attention needs to be paid to the female scientists that have been lost to history.

You are currently an economics major at Stanford University and have just published your first novel. How did you balance writing this book with your studies?

I think I began writing books when I was 11, so for me being a student and writing books has always sort of gone together — I don't really know any different. I drafted most of the book this summer after my freshman year of college, and then I revised the book after my sophomore year and then sold the book the next year.

Writing this book was such an immersive experience, and I got really kind of caught up in my characters and their stories — I was that person who you sometimes see writing at Starbucks all teary-eyed. While I was writing, it felt like I was completely, like, in the heads of my characters. It was a wonderful experience.

Throughout the book, we see how Ro’s passion for science helps her both grieve her dad and solve a lot of the problems she encounters in school. Did you also love science at that age?

I was always really fascinated by science as a kid, and I always participated in my own middle school science fair. The sections of the book where the characters are working on their science project are actually based on my own, real-life experiences. I had a wonderful time doing the fair and had these really solid connections with all of the other science fair kids, so that was something that I really wanted to incorporate into my book.

In addition to loving science and being an intensely loyal friend, Ro is also confident and always tries to stand up for herself. What was your favorite part about creating this character?

Ro is so near and dear to my heart just because I really wanted to write from the point of view of a Chinese American character. I grew up in the Midwest in a pretty culturally homogenous place and I had to hear a lot of the same questions that Ro does in this book. Questions like ‘What are you eating?’ and just a lot of questions about my own culture just because it wasn't that familiar to my peers. So I definitely wrote Ro and Ro’s loving relationship with her Chinese American family and their strong ties and kind of a love letter to my own culture. It came from the fact that I had really wanted to see books with Asian American characters and Asian American cultural elements growing up.

Why was it so important to you to create a story that highlights a young girl who loves the sciences?

In many ways, this book is a love letter to women in STEM and the many scientists who have been overlooked. Ro is actually named after Rosalind Franklin, who was the woman who took the picture of DNA that identified the double helix structure. That was an incredible discovery, but it was her male colleagues who were the ones that won the Nobel Prize. That story just resonates so strongly with me and I really wanted to sort of dedicate the character Ro to the incredible women scientists who came before us.

I was also thinking of the movie Hidden Figures and like the Black woman scientists who were crucial to the U.S. space mission. All of those thoughts kind of were in my mind and really motivated me to write Ro as a character who is confident in her abilities and really ambitious.

What would you like readers to ultimately take away from Clues to the Universe?

I hope this book just feels like a warm hug. I hope that readers and teachers or librarians can read the book and come away potentially with a newfound appreciation for STEM or art and all the ways that science and art intersect, or just kind of like a lot of tenderness and love, and so I mean, I hope that this book just makes people feel good and helps them think of how they would like to approach the world.