A Little Life, A Lot of Growth by Silvia

A Little Life, A Lot of Growth by Silvia - October 2025 Scholarship Essay

I’m currently sitting in my new apartment as a college student with three girls I don’t get along with that well—but at least it’s an apartment. Getting to college was an incredibly stressful and almost impossible time for me, but now that I’m here, even the small frustrations feel acceptable. I never thought I’d have this chance, especially in the United States. When I think about where growth begins, I don’t picture a perfect start. I picture something flawed—small, uncomfortable, but full of potential. That’s what stood out to me most in A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. The story doesn’t begin with success or joy; it begins with four people learning to live through imperfection, and that’s exactly what I’m doing now.
We first meet Jude as a successful thirty-year-old lawyer. There’s something off about him, but the truth comes out slowly. When he meets Caleb, a narcissist he falls in love with, Yanagihara begins peeling back Jude’s layers through Caleb’s abuse, revealing the traumas he’s spent his life hiding. The unspeakable things Jude endured are thankfully not things I’ve ever faced, but I understood his silence. During COVID, my father lost his job, and my family lost our residency status. I watched my parents fall out of love and become aggressive to each other, and I often had to step in. In school, I was quiet and timid, and people took advantage of that. I thought I deserved it. I believed it was my fault my parents hated each other, so I let the mistreatment happen. It was mostly words and racism—nothing “serious”—but it shaped how I saw myself. One time, I considered hurting myself like Jude, but I realized I couldn’t let life win over me.
Eventually, my parents divorced, lost their money, and we moved into a one-bedroom apartment together. But I didn’t let that stop me. They gained a new immigration status, and I earned a scholarship to a private high school. I poured my energy into school—Honors, Dual Enrollment, AP classes—because studying was the one thing that made me feel worthy.
Jude went through pain few can imagine, but Yanagihara’s writing made it feel like he was a friend I desperately wanted to help but couldn’t reach. When he finally left Caleb, all his trauma resurfaced. We learn about the years of abuse, the monastery, the sex work—how his entire childhood was stolen. I often wonder if his sexuality would’ve been different if not for that pain, but when he falls in love with Willem, it doesn’t matter anymore. Seeing someone who believed he was unlovable finally experience love was one of the most human moments I’ve ever read. I felt that when I started opening up in high school. Trusting people was terrifying, but allowing myself to feel again was freeing.
Jude understood me. He believed he was broken and undeserving of happiness, but by letting others in, he learned that love can make even the most damaged parts of life bearable. His words, “Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?” (p. 344), stayed with me. I wasn’t lonely reading this book; it felt like he could read me as I was reading him.
But grief still scares me. Death is inevitable, yet we never expect it to touch the people we love most. Jude’s ending—taking his own life after losing Willem—broke me. It made me afraid to love because I didn’t want to feel that pain. But I’ve learned grief isn’t an ending. It’s something you carry, and eventually, it hurts less. Yanagihara wrote, “You don’t live long enough to learn how to get over anything” (p. 720). Maybe that’s true, but I refuse to let pain define me the way it did Jude. I’m finally building a future for myself, healing slowly but surely. I want to become a strong businesswoman and give my family the stability we lost. I’ll fight for the life Jude never got, build the career he had, and find the happiness he deserved. And when I do, I’ll reread this book and whisper, I told you so.