Why the opening matters

Bryan Washington joins Deborah Treisman to read “A Small Flame,” by Yiyun Li, which was published in The New Yorker in 2017. Washington, a winner of the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, is the author of the story collection “Lot” and the novels “Memorial,” “Family Meal,” and “Palaver,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2025.