A Farewell to Tony Yu

Many traditions depict life as a pilgrimage. Though he spent much of his life in Chicago, I can’t imagine Tony otherwise than en route to somewhere. In him the seriousness of the Tang Monk was always mixed with the mischief of the Monkey King– these being the two main protagonists of the Journey to the West to which he dedicated many years of his full life. Like them, he had powers of perception and transformation that seemed superhuman, and any demons on his path had to reckon with his swift ripostes; and like them, he was restless in the pursuit of a world-embracing harmony with room for rebels and saints alike. If you had not been so vividly and undeniably part of our world, Tony, we might have thought someone like you could only have been dreamt up in fiction.