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Amy Tan
BIO
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California in 1952, several years after her mother and father immigrated to the San Francisco Bay area from China. When she was eight, her essay, "What the Library Means to Me," won first prize among elementary school participants, for which Tan received a transistor radio and publication in the local newspaper. Upon the deaths of her brother and father in 1967 and 1968 from brain tumors, the family began a haphazard journey through Europe, before settling in Montreux, Switzerland, where Tan graduated in her junior year in 1969.
For the next seven years, Tan attended five schools. She first went to Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, and there, on a blind date, met her future husband, Lou DeMattei. She followed him to San Jose, where she enrolled at San Jose City College. She next attended San Jose State University, and, while working two part-time jobs, became an English honor's student and a President's Scholar. In 1972, Tan graduated with honors, receiving a B.A. with a double major in English and Linguistics. She was awarded a scholarship to attend the Summer Linguistics Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1973, she earned her M.A. in Linguistics, also from San Jose State University, and then was awarded a Graduate Minority Fellowship under the affirmative action program at the University of California, Berkeley, where she enrolled as a doctoral student in linguistics.
Following the murder of one of her closest friends, Tan left her doctoral program before completing her degree, and for the next five years worked as a language development consultant and project director for programs serving disabled children from birth to age five. She then became a freelance business writer specializing in corporate communications for such companies as AT&T, IBM, and Pacific Bell.
In 1985, when a psychiatrist treating Tan for her self-described workaholism fell asleep for the third time during one of their sessions, Tan quit therapy and decided to write fiction instead. She attended her first writer's workshop, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, where she met the writer Molly Giles, who later led a small workshop that often met in Tan's house. In 1986, Tan's first short story, End Game appeared in the now defunct magazine, FM Five. The story was later reprinted in Seventeen, which attracted the attention of literary agent, Sandra Dijkstra, who encouraged Tan to continue writing fiction. When Tan had completed three stories, her agent submitted them, along with a proposal for a collection, which was bought by editor FAITH SALE at G.P. Putnam's Sons. In 1989, THE JOY LUCK CLUB was published and, through word-of-mouth endorsements by independent booksellers, became a surprise bestseller, logging more than 40 weeks on the New York Times list. Though Tan wrote the book as a collection of linked short stories, reviewers enthusiastically and erroneously referred to the book as an intricately woven "novel." The label stuck. THE JOY LUCK CLUB was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award. It received the Commonwealth Gold Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. It was adapted into a feature film in 1994, for which Tan was a co-screenwriter with Ron Bass and a co-producer with Bass and Wayne Wang.
Tan's second book, THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE, was published in 1991, followed by THE HUNDRED SECRET SENSES in 1995. Both books appeared on The New York Times bestseller list. Her latest novel, THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER, is scheduled for publication in February 2001.
Tan's short stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Grand Street, Harper's, The New Yorker, Threepenny Review, Ski, and others. Her essay, "Mother Tongue" was chosen for Best American Essays in 1991 and has been widely anthologized. Tan's books are often included as part of the multicultural curriculum of high schools and colleges, an honor which caused her much ambivalence and led her to writing a speech, "Required Reading and Other Dangerous Subjects," which she has since delivered in universities across the country. She is the editor for the 1999 edition of BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES. Her work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Catalan, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Russian, Estonian, Serbo-Croation, Czech, Polish, Hebrew, Greek, Tagalog, and Indonesian.
In addition, Tan has written two children's books, THE MOON LADY (1992) and THE CHINESE SIAMESE CAT (1994). The latter is now being developed into a children's television series, and is part of a symphony program of words and music produced and conducted by George Daughtery. Along with novelist Stephen King and columnist Dave Barry, Tan is a member of the literary garage band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, for which she sings the Nancy Sinatra classic, "These Boots Are Made for Walking," to raise money for literacy and first amendment rights groups. Tan's rendition of the pop culture classic can be heard on the CD album, "Stranger than Fiction," which benefits the PEN Writers Fund.
Tan lives in San Francisco and New York with her husband, Lou DeMattei, their cat, Sagwa, and their two Yorkshire terriers, Bubba and Lilli.
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AUTHOR TALK
 November 2005
The author of such works as THE JOY LUCK CLUB, THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE and THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER, Amy Tan is best known for her poignant novels that examine the dynamic relationships between mothers and daughters. She shifts her focus from this familiar theme in her latest offering, SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING, which she utilizes as a platform to explore questions of morality, the perceptions of truth, and the negative outcomes of even the best of intentions.
In this interview, Tan discusses the reasons for this departure, and stresses the importance of humor and fiction to address serious subjects. She also examines the book's underlying socio-political dimension and describes how she combined various literary conventions from several genres to create a literary puzzle that is both thought-provoking and entertaining to read.
Question: Where does your title come from?
Amy Tan: In Buddhist countries, you are morally prohibited from killing anything. Yet, some people find loopholes, rationalization, justification, equivocation --- and that is evident in any culture and religion and government. In Burma, a fisherman might say he is "saving fish from drowning" as he removes it from the water. It struck me as an apt metaphor for many things in life, both personal and in the larger scheme of things. The world is filled with the need to save people, save the rainforests, save the earth from global warming. When we, the outsiders, are confronted with so many problems --- hunger, suppression, civil war, or malaria, for instance --- we are thrown into having a moral response. It could be that we simply look away; doing nothing is a moral response. Or we jump in with our shirtsleeves rolled up. And perhaps, in the process, we knock someone over and injure them. So what happens when our good intentions don't lead to good consequences? What if our actions wind up not saving lives but killing them? What is our moral responsibility then?
Q: This book is something of a departure for you, in that mother-daughter relationships are not at the center of your story, although two of them hover at the edges. Did you make a conscious decision to move toward a different type of subject?
AT: I finished the last book about six months after both my mother and editor had died. At two in the morning, immediately after I finished that last book, I started writing the outline for this one. I had been thinking about the subject of this book for a while --- the disturbing questions about intentions. But up until then I had been writing about mothers and daughters because the beliefs I developed from my life with a difficult mother had occupied most of my thoughts. And I tend to write about the questions that continually haunt me. But, my relationship with my mother toward the end of her life was wonderful, and usually writers write about what's not-so-wonderful.
Q: Also, nearly all of the action takes place in the present rather than the past, unlike several of your previous books. Are you less interested in the past than you once were, or are you just more urgently drawn toward the present?
AT: The story takes place in the present but the past informs it. I'm always interested in both. I'm interested in the influences of the past and the patterns that it imposes on the present, rather than the past as purely sentimental. Sentimentality can creep in, but it's not the thrust of why I go to the past. There are some subtle references in my new book to the past --- the migration of artistic motifs, ideas and religious beliefs, particularly Chinese animist notions that have drifted south into Burma, a very Buddhist country. And there are Christian notions imported by missionaries, and with the animist mix, you wind up with a fairly interesting religion. There is the influence in the political or historical past of one country on another. And of course there's Bibi's past as well, which certainly has a major effect on her present state of being and what she narrates and how.
Q: While there are Asian-American and Asian characters in the book, most of the principal characters are not Asian, and some of them are men, which is another big change for you. Did you begin to find dealing with Asian-American characters and with women limiting, or are you just broadening your canvas?
AT: Yeah, I never was a man before! (Laughs). Actually, it had more to do with the nature of the story itself. It wasn't that I said to myself I should try something new to prove that I can do this or that. My new book just brings into play more elements from my life, my multiple perspectives and interests. And from a writing standpoint, I've always wanted to do something like THE CANTERBURY TALES, in which twelve people go on a journey and have their stories to tell. They all end up at an inn, talking to the barkeep, who takes this all in and joins them. Harry Bailley is his name in Chaucer's story. And in my book, Harry Bailley is the one who stays behind and interprets all the stories.
Q: Was there a particular incident or interest that inspired you to write this novel?
AT: There was no single thing. In the book's "Note to the Reader," I describe the inspiration and genesis of the book; but, in reality, that foreword is where the fiction begins. It sets up the story as based on a "true" story dictated by a ghost to a psychic medium. I chose a ghost because I needed a particular kind of narrator who was omniscient, but also opinionated and funny and strident and, at times, a little obnoxious. She tells inappropriate truths. The only way you can get atypical omniscience is with a schizophrenic character or someone who's dead, and I chose the latter. But the story about finding the writings of someone named Bibi Chen is completely fabricated, as is the story about the lost tourists who made the international news.
The real reasons for the book were many: I would see events in the news that would very much disturb me, and I was disturbed by the way the news was being interpreted. I started to see that people's acceptance of what is true and not true has a lot to do with their assumptions, their existing beliefs. There was a real news story a few years back about twin boys who were leading a group of Karens hiding in the jungle. The tribe believed they were gods who could stop bullets. They probably found proof to support this belief. Well, when we see something on televised news, we generally assume it's true. But I thought to myself: Anything handed to us as truth is only a version of truth --- there's interpretation there, and obviously it is edited for length, so you can't possibly get the complete picture. One of the questions I wrestle over in my mind is: What is true in anything we see and read and hear? Is a reality show a reflection of reality? I wanted to play around with that notion of truth in the book.
Q: Why Burma as a setting? Have you traveled there? How did you research the setting?
AT: Burma is a great setting for a novel --- beautiful, mysterious, historical, forgotten, transformed, ill, and full of the horrific that is not mentioned in tour brochures. It is troubled and troubling, and that made me uncomfortable --- a good place to start a story.
I thought a lot about whether to go. A friend of mine said, "How can you go there? They have a terrible government and we should boycott it." Another writer said: "You have to go there and be a witness." Someone else said, "You can go just for the culture. Culture isn't political." And some say you have to engage with countries on the Needs to Improve list. I read a lot of articles on constructive engagement, economic peer pressure, some of them by oil company lobbyists. In the end, I had to ask myself, is it my intention to help the people there, or to witness their plight, or to understand the complexity of the problem, or to simply have a good time seeing shrines, Buddhist art or antique shops? Which? All? What was my decision based on? That then was my moral response --- knowing multiple sides to a moral dilemma, finding ambiguity, then having to choose and rationalize my choice. Part of the reason was to write a novel based there. And the other…
Well, I had been asked once to go to Burma on behalf of a human rights group. They asked if I was willing to go there and criticize the government in public. I've been asked to do the same in China. Now I do think that many of the human rights organizations are essential and do good work, and they do save the lives of real people --- many of them writers. But I've also disagreed with certain human rights organizations and their media attempts to shame a government. Each country is different. I'm not sure it has a real impact on improving people's lives; it may even prove detrimental. Yet the groups seem well-intentioned. So I've had to think, how does anyone know if their good intentions will lead to good? If we don't know for certain, should we make contingency plans for actions that backfire? Are intentions contaminated by self-interest?
So I went to Burma for about a week, and I took copious notes of what I saw and what I felt. With each city I imagined what might take place there. But I told no one what I was doing. Actually, let me revise what I just said. According to the foreword in the book, I did not go to Burma, most certainly not, and that's because writers are not allowed in Burma. Horrors, we might write about the place.
Q: Romances, both successful and failed, play a major role in this story. In fact, there's something reminiscent of a Shakespearean comedy like A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM here, where amorous couples are let loose in an idyllic forest and left to sort themselves out. Is this somewhat new fictional territory for you?
AT: I took fictional devices from a number of genres. There are twelve travelers, and twelve or more genres here --- murder mystery, romance, picaresque, comic novel, magical realism, fable, myth, police detective, political farce, and so forth. In romances, there are misunderstandings and missed connections, but there's consummation at the end. In any romance, that's the formula, sometimes minus the comedy, but always with the consummation. Another genre is mystery --- the reader doesn't know how Bibi died, which is gruesomely described, leaving you with strong hints of murder and conflicting details that must be solved by the end. There's a travelogue aspect of being in an exotic country and getting insider tips. There is fiction masquerading as a guide to art and culture and wildlife. People love to take armchair journeys to interesting, exotic places and learn about their inner workings. I do. There's the adventure tale --- twelve tourists are lost in the jungle with perils galore. There's myth, a real one, in fact, among some of the Karen tribe. It's that of the White Younger Brother, in which a besieged people expect a white savior to restore their power. There's the scatological humor that teenagers and grown men find so funny. I took all these genres and made it a literary puzzle for myself, which kept me entertained and put my brain into all kinds of twists. I figured if I enjoyed it, others might as well.
Q: Although this is not a political novel as such, there is a strong political dimension to it. One of your main themes is the huge cultural and economic and political chasm that exists between the Americans and the Burmese. Why did you want to focus on this kind of situation right now? Did you feel some sort of responsibility as a novelist or as a human being to address it? Does it reflect a wider dynamic in the world at present?
AT: It's not completely a political novel, but whenever you're talking about a situation in the world like the one in Burma, you traipse into what is political. In fiction, hopefully it is not too one-sided or polemical. I like things that are myriad-sided and mutating. I was reading stories about Burma over the years, and it looked like things were getting better. Political prisoners would be released, and reforms would be announced, Aung San Suu Kyi would be freed from house arrest, but then it would all be yanked back very quickly when the world was no longer looking. But the strategy worked, because the temporary improvements would all be reported in the news and people outside ended up feeling Burma was doing better. That's what I thought, as did friends I asked. Then I would read more. By the way, I use the traditional name Burma, because it's my political choice. I'm saying that this military regime that took over when it lost the 1990 election and renamed the country Myanmar is not the legitimate government. In the novel, however, I use both names. The story still contains ambivalence.
I started this book in 2001, before 9/11 and the Iraq War. And since then, world perception of the U.S. has flip-flopped. Those in other countries question our intentions, whether they really will do good and if they are self-serving. And as our country grew more divided, I saw that many people adhered to one side or the other, with very little in the middle as common ground. How could our perceptions of truth be so different? Are we seeing only to confirm what we already believe?
Q: It may strike some people as odd to juxtapose light social and romantic comedy with the grim situation of the Burmese. Why did you feel these two aspects of the novel would work well together?
AT: Humor and fiction are among the most potent ways to address serious problems and keep people's attention on it. I realize that people read for entertainment and pleasure. That's part of why I read. And if you present a book about obviously unhappy and irresolvable situations, many readers are going to turn off. The character Bibi confesses she much prefers the colonial stories of romanticism, the happy days under the parasol, throwbacks to a happier time, even if they are a distortion of the truth. She goes on to say that the books that are about Burma today are too grim. They start off with the horror, in the middle there's another facet to the horror, and at the end there's the complexity of horror. And you feel horrible after reading them. You might feel morally good that you took the time to read them and you're disturbed, but then you don't know what to do. You are helpless to help. Those books don't move you to a spiritual place that's uplifting and less stifling. Secretly, you set those books aside and don't finish reading them.
Some of Bibi's sentiments were mine. I had to force myself to read those books. I knew I should read them. But that's why I like the comic novel or fiction that transports me to another world. It's subversive. It seduces me into reading about serious subjects. Comic novels over time have actually been very successful at pointing out moral, social, and political ills. Jane Austen was a master at jabbing at the absurdities and oppression of the class system. Comedy is really one of most expedient ways to get people to understand nasty issues.
Q: The power of the media, especially 24/7 television news and reality shows --- and the ever-blurring line between them --- is another major theme in your novel. Television is instrumental in determining the fate of both the tourists and the Burmese. Do you get the feeling that the global power of television is just transforming and swallowing up every other kind of reality, so that even serious novelists like yourself are forced to confront it at every turn?
AT: Absolutely. Certain people have questioned whether fiction still has importance and relevance among readers. It's needed more than ever. To me, imagination is the closest thing we have to compassion. To have compassion you have to be able to imagine the lives of others, including people who are suffering, and people whose lives are affected by us. Fiction has a huge role in presenting the truth of anything ---- not the facts, but the feelings, what you feel, what others feel, what your moral position is, your version of truth.
About six years ago, I heard a news network claim that the news shapes what happens. It's the notion that putting a spotlight on something gets us involved. I've thought that as well --- if only this problem were covered by the news, the problem would be fixed. Do we depend more and more on this kind of alteration, the reality makeovers? Is that good? I wanted to examine my personal response to this, what I really believe about the influence of the media. I wanted to ask questions and pose all the different ways in which this was both good and bad. In the novel, the good part is that the media helps the travelers get saved. The bad part is that Harry is in collusion with the junta and more tourists come to visit a country that is supposed to be boycotted.
Let me give a firsthand example of the media shaping the news, one that particularly affected me. Some years back, a British television documentary called "The Dying Room" presented secret footage on orphanages. It depicted babies who were dying. The conclusion was that girls were being systematically killed in Chinese orphanages. It got a lot of attention in the news, much outrage from the public. In reaction, the Chinese government got very angry, closed the orphanages to outsiders, stopped accepting money for cleft palate surgeries, and stopped foreign adoptions for about a year. Did the documentary help those other babies? Nobody could get in to check. A lot of hopeful American parents were in anguish, and a lot of babies did not get adopted. Cleft palate and heart surgeries did not occur. Some of those babies most certainly died as a result of that. Was there another way to improve the situation of those children? Perhaps. I would have liked to see a report on that. Sometimes direct criticism of a government is not the best way to improve matters. Who does grandstanding serve? I would rather think about the impact that I have on a real person right now rather than way in the future with idealism as the goal. That's just me, but perhaps we need the balance of many people who see it all different ways.
Q: You've said that this is a story about morality and intention. As one of your characters puts it, "You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences?" Can you talk about that?
AT: This is not about the kind of morality where I'm shaking my finger and saying you're bad for what you're doing or not doing. It's really about the questions I've asked myself, about many things going on in the world and not just in Burma. And if I am asking these questions, maybe others are as well. There are no easy questions to things that are seemingly irresolvable. When I begin a novel, I don't know where it will take me. I can't start with an answer, a pre-made conclusion that I then drive into place with the hammer of my words.
On a day-to-day level, consider how we are reacting to people suffering in New Orleans. We watch this reality on TV. I know people who cry every time they turn on the television and see a victim crying. They feel they can't do enough or give enough. I've heard of others who don't watch or read the news, because they would rather not get disturbed and ruin their concentration to work at hand. There are others who are holding benefits, getting others involved. Some have given five dollars because that's what they can afford. Some give five thousand, because that's what they can afford. Some go to work at disaster relief centers. So there's a huge range of reactions. Now here is just one question related to that: If I feel nothing and do nothing, is that better than feeling sad and then doing nothing? Is a deeply, deeply empathizing person better than a rich person giving a lot of money? There's no answer to this. It's a question that generates more questions.
Q: A remarkable woman named Bibi Chen, a recently deceased antiques dealer and patron of the arts, is the narrator and guiding spirit --- literally --- of this novel. Is she based on anyone you know, or is she entirely a product of your imagination?
AT: Well, her feisty voice is like my mother's. She's disarming in what she says that is piquant, quirky, often inappropriate, and yet honest. But no, otherwise, Bibi has no counterpart in real life. In the story, she's a philanthropist, socialite, and antiques gallery owner. She liked to give money to organizations that give parties. She enjoyed seeing her name in the social columns of the papers. She wanted to be listed in the programs of ritzy benefits, and she wanted to get credit. She's upset, in the afterlife, that she's getting only a wing of a museum named after her and not the whole thing. For me, the notion of credit fits in with the question of intentions. Is it wrong to want credit? Is it necessary to get credit?
Q: There are two main mysteries in your novel --- what will happen to the vanished tourists, and how Bibi Chen died. In both cases, the outcomes could have been quite ghastly, but ultimately they aren't. Were you ever tempted to make things turn out badly for Bibi and the tourists, to create a very dark ending?
AT: No, never. It started as a comic novel, it always was going to be a comic novel. I can't have the main characters die in a comedy unless they go to a funny place in the afterlife. Comedy has a contract with those who are pulled into it. It can take them out on a limb, but you can't let it break and take everyone else down with it screaming their heads off as they meet an unexpected and very unpleasant demise.
Q: Of course, things do end very differently for the Burmese, who are not nearly as fortunate as the Americans. The Americans' experience with the Burmese actually enriches their lives and changes them for the better, whereas the lives of the Burmese get worse as a result of their contact with the Americans. Did you feel guilty about having things turn out this way, or did you feel that any other ending would have rung false?
AT: The Americans more or less have the requisite happy endings, but the questions remain. Some are changed and some are not changed by their experience. Some have learned things, become wiser people or more questioning about life. Others haven't. The tourists served their fictional purpose --- they went on a journey, got roughed up, and went back to their lives mostly intact. Now we know what happened to these people. With the Karen people, well, we don't know precisely what happened. We are on the outside. It may very well be that they died or are in hiding. The only thing that is certain is that whatever happened, they all stuck together. I wanted to end with that commitment, with a sense that it was more important to stay together than life itself. And because of that, we want to know what happened to people who believed that.
Q: Toward the conclusion of the novel, Bibi reflects on the nature of endings, which in a sense are never truly final. Yet, of course, a novel must end. How do you reconcile the existential and spiritual reality of endings with the demands of art?
AT: We leave the tourists at some logical point on the endless loop. They've gone home, returned to their lives; yet, you also sense that their lives have become more complicated and there's more that will happen, as with real life. As a writer, I know that the expectations a reader has must be fulfilled. The loose ends have to be addressed, although not neatly and falsely tied into a perfect bundle. Hopefully, the characters have more dimensionality by the end. They are imperfect, yet they are lovable. But some things in a novel may remain unanswered and are disturbing. Good that does no good is a disturbing notion. But what is a novel for if not to be provocative? Some stories exist to delve into the questions that we don't want to ask.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from this novel?
AT: That they had a good time reading it, meaning they enjoyed it and thought it was worth the money they paid and the time they spent with it. And that they left it wanting to ask the same questions in their own lives about truth and intentions, about how truth affects intentions, and about where they find truth, individual and universal, and why it's important to have both.
© Copyright 2005, Penguin Putnam. All rights reserved.
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INTERVIEW
March 2001
Sitting atop the bestseller list since its publication a month ago, THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER --- Amy Tan's latest multigenerational tale spanning decades and continents --- has seemingly done the unthinkable: surpass THE JOY LUCK CLUB in poignancy and insight. Bookreporter.com writer Jami Edwards was fortunate enough to catch up with Tan by phone in Raleigh, N.C., one of the stops on her nationwide book tour. Join them as they discuss the challenges of writing such a profoundly personal story, Tan's relationship with her mother, what books are on the author's nightstand, and much more.
BRC: You did something extraordinary with THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER. After finishing it once, you took it back from your publisher and virtually rewrote it. Why did you do this and how different is the second version?
AT: I lost my mother in November 1999 and two weeks later I lost my editor. I think anybody who has lost somebody they love can't help but be transformed in how they see the world and themselves. Because of the feelings I had I felt I had to transform the book since it is in many ways like a mirror of my life, so I began to rewrite it. Some of the basic story is the same but there's a structure in it --- I think a depth to it --- that I didn't have in the first go-round. The whole beginning of not knowing the name of the woman, Precious Auntie, was not there; I added that later. The voice business and the imagery of bones were all added in the new draft.
BRC: Not knowing your mother's real name was true to life for you, wasn't it?
AT:Yes, the last day of my mother's life I discovered what her name was when she was born and I also discovered what my grandmother's name had been. I'd never known those names until that day. It made me wonder what else I didn't know and what my mother might have neglected to tell me.
BRC: Is there something powerful for you about the names being different?
AT: There is something mythically powerful about a name. I tried to tell myself at one point that it was a rather trivial matter, that it's more important t know what's behind a name, but a name is your first gift in life. It's your placemark in the world; it's what's left behind. Sometimes it's the only thing that's left behind, what people remember 100 or 200 years from now. Unless we keep the stories, our name is our legacy.
BRC: Like the character Ruth, haven't you had experience with losing your voice as well?
AT: I have, although mine was much clearer in its origins. My husband's and my best friend was murdered on my birthday and we had to go in and identify what was taken during the robbery and also identify the body. Every year for about 10 years I would lose my voice on my birthday for several days. I thought it was laryngitis the first year, then when it happened the second year and the third year I knew it was probably psychosomatic. Around my birthday I will still become tense and depressed. I don't have a problem with getting older but I catch myself later realizing how I felt. This year my book was published on my birthday and I found myself asking my husband, "Why am I so unhappy? I just feel so grim and glum." It wasn't until a few days later that I realized it was the anniversary of Pete's death. And, of course, I always feel that way. The body remembers.
BRC: You've dealt with a lot of death in your life, including your father and a brother who both died of brain tumors... What effect have these experiences had on you and your perceptions of "yin people"?
AT: At times I think: Am I magnet for disaster? But I also think, I know a lot of people, I'm close to a lot of people. But it does make me wonder. I have a friend who jokingly said to me, "Gee, maybe I shouldn't be your friend."
I've had this question of yin people come up since I was three years old. My mother believed from those early years that I was able to communicate with ghosts and always encouraged me to talk to them. I always resisted the notion and throughout much of our growing up together refused to talk to "yin people" or whatever the characters in my books call them. I do believe in some kind of existence, whether you call it an energy or a collective unconscious, and I have seen what I suppose most people would call ghosts --- a form of somebody --- but more importantly, I have sensed what someone felt, which is the purest form of communication. I don't even know how to describe it; it's such a magnificent feeling of knowing exactly what somebody feels without any misunderstanding or need for translation and that's to me what "yin people" are.
BRC: Has it made you more accepting of your own mortality?
AT: I'm not afraid of death, although I am afraid of violence. I live with a constant sense of danger and I think it's because I've had so much of it happen in my life. I also had a mother who was conscious of danger and instilled in me this fear. But I'm not afraid of death per se. If I were taken out by a car accident or plane or an illness, that would be too bad but that's the way it goes. On the other hand, because of what happened to my friend who was murdered, it makes me think about the horror of somebody dying at the hand of another person's maliciousness. I guess it's the maliciousness that's frightening --- that human beings can lose their humanity to that extreme.
BRC: THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER is the most personal of your books. What was it like, even just in terms of the physical act, to write this novel while at the same time dealing with the tremendous personal challenges of your mother's illness?
AT: The writing was a way to go back and reflect. I think when anyone goes through the loss of another person, it's hard to talk about it and yet you need to talk about it. Writing a story that was fictionalized but which enabled me to express the same feelings was both a comfort and a distraction. And yet I couldn't write the real story until after my mother had gone because I felt that by not finishing it both she and my editor would have to stay just because I needed them. When they died two weeks apart, I almost threw the book away because it seemed so meaningless compared to what I'd gone through. But then, I also felt that I had two people to help me, that I had a ghost writer and a ghost editor. I mean that it in the best of senses, that you carry on the memory and the intentions and the love of what that person would have wanted you to do --- that it's not simply the notion of having a ghostly presence, what most people might think of in a science fiction mode.
BRC: Traveling with someone is intimate and can be very wearing, yet your trip to China in 1987 was a turning point for your relationship with your mother. What happened in China that improved that relationship?
AT: For one thing I saw that my mother got into as many misunderstandings and arguments in China as she did in the United States and that it wasn't her English. I saw her interact with my sisters and that she was the same with them, that she was both motherly and oppressive and loving and irritating. Again, it was seeing my mother in a new situation and yet knowing what was familiar, what had been there all along. And also seeing it within myself. I saw many ironies: how American I truly am and how foreign I felt in China and yet how Chinese I was at the same time. How so much of our family's approach to life, and to the dinner table, was exactly the same and had nothing to do with culture; it had to do with who we were in our family. I saw that my mother was a fascinating person formed by history in a particular time and place and that I wanted to know more about that time and place, as well as my mother. I wanted to know her history and there I was in the place where her history began.
BRC: What would your mother think of THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER?
AT: She worried a lot that I wasn't getting it done. I think she is proud. I sense her and my grandmother at my book readings and sometimes when I'm answering a question I can see them looking at each other and saying, "No, no, no, no, she's not telling the complete truth." I think they're having a wonderful time as this book goes around and it especially means something because my grandmother is the woman on the cover of the book. It's a sepia-toned photo of her; she's about 17 years old and it's around 1905. That's the Bonesetter's Daughter --- the woman without a name.
BRC: Unlike a lot of writers, you don't come from a family of readers, yet they had a strong literary influence on you. Please tell us about it.
AT: My father was a Baptist minister. In some ways I think of sermons as being oral storytelling and that was an influence. My mother was also a great oral storyteller; she talked about her life in China, but always in Chinese to relatives while she was snapping beans at the table. I have since discovered that my family actually does have literary origins. My grandfather was an editor, as well as a revolutionary, in China. My grandfather on my father's side was a minister and, of course, he wrote sermons. None of this was in English and they weren't writers of fiction, yet I think the written word was very much validated in my family. On the other hand, it is kind of strange to know that many members of my family have not read my books in English.
BRC: Do you consider yourself a voracious reader now?
AT: I am a voracious reader. I have to read something every day and it's to the point that, although I didn't make this a conscious decision, I have not watched television on a regular basis for the last 15 years. I don't even watch the news. Probably the last bit of news I caught was when the recount was happening because my husband had the TV on all the time. But I never turn on the television. I haven't turned it on throughout this book tour. I prefer to read if I have any spare time at all.
BRC: What is currently on your nightstand?
AT: I have a book called BEING DEAD by Jim Crace. I think it's beautifully written, but on a personal level the early part troubles me a little bit... I'm going to read the whole thing, but I had to stop and say, okay, let's get past this point here. The other book I have is something called CHILDREN OF PITHIVIERS by Sheila Kohler. It's an advance galley and I've liked her other work, so I'm reading her. And I have another book called THE TRUTH ABOUT DOGS by Stephen Budiansky. I don't agree with everything he says about dogs, but I find it very interesting.
BRC: You've spent a great deal of time dealing with parental expectations and writing about those conflicts, particularly between mothers and daughters. Now that you have suffered the loss of both your parents, do you feel any relief from those expectations or are they in some way more pronounced?
AT: I don't feel expectations as much, I suppose, because my mother was already so proud of me years before she died. What I do sense is the loss of the person who worried the most for me. I don't know how to explain it ... it was so irritating for so many years that she worried to the point of my aggravation and now that she's gone I feel that no one else in the world will worry as much about me. It makes me feel more vulnerable.
BRC: As an Asian-American writer you've been burdened with certain expectations to be a cultural representative or role model. What do you believe is the responsibility, if any, of the writer to society?
AT: I believe that a writer does have to think about the responsibilities, but make them individually and never have them dictated to him or her. I think about the reasons I write and I have to be true to them. I want to write about how I've evolved as a person through the history of my family, or I want to write about the things that I believe and act them out in the way of a narrative. I can have characters who speak thoughts that may or may not be my own, but I always know the distinction between my thoughts and those of the narrator or the characters.
I also am conscious, more so as a result of being published, that people will sometimes interpret my work as being representational and therefore they think my role as a writer is to speak out about this issue of what the role of literature should be and should not be. But I don't think that writers should censor themselves and I don't think that readers should censor writers. Readers also have a responsibility to be intelligent and not to interpret everything in a book as necessarily serving as a model or being representational of a particular culture and that literature is not meant to right the moral wrongs of a past society or the current one.
BRC: THE JOY LUCK CLUB was considered a novel when it came out, although you had actually written it as a collection of connected short stories. What are the differences between writing short stories and novels and has your point of view changed at all since guest editing THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 1999?
AT: My feelings on the short story are basically the same as those expressed in the introduction of that anthology. Just to add, I do think that short stories have a different arc from the novel; it's one that doesn't necessarily weave in and out. The short story can do things experimentally that a novel may not be able to sustain because it could fracture the narrative. It can also do small shifts but have greater impact because of the brevity of the piece. I love the short form and I wish that I could write a novel in which every chapter is a wonderfully shaped short story, but that's not necessarily how the breeding of a novel works; it has to go in different directions and leave pieces loosely planted in chapters and then connected and reconnected in different ways later on.
BRC: Don't you think you accomplished that in JOY LUCK CLUB?
AT: No, I still think of that as a collection of short stories, but connected by theme and community. And I don't know whether I would have called that a novel. Other people feel that structurally that is enough to consider it a novel and that's when I leave it to the literary deconstructionists to determine what it is that I've written. I just know what I was trying to write at the time, and I thought they were short stories. I think it's a wonderful way to deconstruct life in general, to use it through what we read, but I don't find it helpful to deconstruct as I write and I resist doing it after I've written so I won't be too self-conscious. I think a lot of what I write must remain on a more intuitive level.
BRC: You have several threads coming together in BONESETTER, including your training in linguistics and your mother's Alzheimer's. What is the relationship between language and memory that most appeals to you as a writer?
AT: To me language is both so rich and also impoverished. There's not a single word that can express completely a feeling and that's why it takes 350 pages to express some nuance of that feeling --- and then the next day it could change again. The choice of words influences perception and the ways we can infinitely combine words creates new sensations. You think of words as being sensual. It's one of the reasons that I had a passage in BONESETTER where Art and Ruth, early in their relationship, are talking and she asks, "What's your favorite word?" and he tells her and all she can think of --- which is how I feel --- is all these cliches such as "peace," "love," "happiness," and how they're all inadequate.
BRC: In the First Foreword of ON WRITING, Stephen King recounts a conversation with you about what you are never asked during the question-and-answer period following a writer's talk. You answered that "No one ever asks about the language." Here's your chance. What do you most want to explain to your readers and other would-be writers about the language?
AT: I try to create different kinds of languages, which are based on the languages that I grew up with. I had an internal language --- as I think most people do --- that is not fully expressible in words, but I try to come closest to it in images and metaphors. I also have a language that I spoke in school and among friends. And I heard a language that was different, which was my mother's language. She also spoke a version of English that wasn't standard and I try to include that. It's what people might call fractured English, but within it were combinations of words that I think, looking back as an adult, were wonderful at expressing herself --- this cross between a Chinese sensibility and American circumstances. It's one of the major reasons that I love being a writer...playing with the language.
BRC: At the end of THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER, Bao Bomu says, "Think about your intentions. What is in your heart, what you want to put in others." What, ultimately, were your intentions with your latest novel? What did you want to put in our hearts?
AT: I wanted to create something that was the closest form to ancestor worship from an American point of view that I could think of, and that is to remember and to cherish and to understand. The message was not meant to go beyond that. I don't try to write books with messages for other people. But if there was a wish, I would hope that people would enjoy the story first of all and then take from it, through the interpretation of their past and emotions, something personal that is only and uniquely their own.
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INTERVIEW
TBR Writer Jami Edwards had a chance to ask Author of the Century, Amy Tan, some questions about her writing and her life. After the publication of THE JOY LUCK CLUB, Amy Tan became a familiar name --- her debut novel was a raving success and won several prestigious awards. Find out what the pressure was like for Amy when she sat down to write her second book, if that kind of pressure ever really goes away, who her saving grace is when writing gets extra tough, and what she is working on now. Amy Tan is an extraordinary writer who skillfully reproduces the powerful and at times eruptive relationships between mothers, daughters, and siblings in her works of literature. Readers everywhere can relate to her lyrical prose and her complex characters --- read Amy Tan's latest interview to find out more about this amazing woman and writer.
BRC: Your first book, THE JOY LUCK CLUB, won the National Book Award.How did that affect you as a writer?
AT: Actually, I did not win the National Book Award, although this notion that I did win it has followed me around for years. (I keep waiting for the misprint to escalate to the point that people will be saying I won a Nobel Prize!) The truth is, in 1989, I was one of five writers nominated for an NBA, which was given to John Casey, as well as for a National Book Critics Circle Award, which was given to Oscar Hijuelos. That year, I did receive the Commonwealth Club Gold Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewer's Award, as well as some other honors. At the time that all this happened, I was trying to dismiss the hoopla as transitory, rationalizing that I was the flavor of the month, and that once I received my pat on the back, I would return to the same obscurity from which I emerged.
BRC: Did winning awards for your first book make you feel like your second book was "under a microscope" or pressed for a second success of the same magnitude?
AT: I felt many pressures, the most onerous one coming from myself.I did not know what people saw in my first book.And as I tried to write the second, I could not quiet the anxiety that I would fail for all kinds of reasons.There was first and foremost my need to create something that was different, yet honest, personally meaningful, and which contained the aesthetic merits I valued in good fiction.At the same time, I would often replay in my head the reviews, but only the really bad ones, the mocking ones that said my life wasn't interesting enough to fill a book, that sort of thing, personal jibes. I realized that the public does not simply judge your art but your persona, or their imaginings of what that must be, which, of course, becomes a fiction of sorts. On top of that, I did not want to disappoint my publisher and their hopes for book that would do well.Yet, I did not think I could "write a bestseller."I could only write a book.And seven false starts later, I finally wrote that second book, THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE, which, as it turned out, went to number one on the bestseller lists and all that. But the anxiety still continues, gets worse with each book.
BRC: At one point, you were banned in China.Please elaborate on that for us and update us on your current status in China.
AT: Banned may be too harsh a word.I was denied a visa a couple of years ago. Six months before that, a friend who lives in Beijing had invited me to fund-raiser for orphanages in China. I was planning to go to Beijing to visit relatives anyway, so I agreed to attend the dinner.Shortly after, a British television production called "The Dying Rooms" appeared in the UK and the US and created a frenzy of outrage over the belief that China was systematically killing its orphans.So by the time, I arrived in China, the tensions were high over any foreigner presence related to orphanages.At the same time, the fund-raiser had sold 450 seats among the expatriate community in Beijing, and the event was going to be attended by many of the ambassadors there, as well as top executives of international companies. On the afternoon of the event, the Public Security Bureau (PSB) in Beijing informed the fund-raisers that they did not have a proper permit to collect public monies and the event would have to be canceled.Eventually, the PSB compromised and said they could hold the dinner, but not the program. The dinner proceeded like a wedding reception at which the bride did not show up. The children didn't sing. I didn't tell my jokes.The international press caught wind of this, and somehow the headlines got whipped up, to the effect of saying that "police stormed the dinner," "tore down banners," and "prevented Amy Tan from going to the podium" (I could practically picture my arm being torn off as I tried to exercise my freedom of speech!) --- a much more exciting version of what actually happened. In the news coverage that followed, my name was consistently linked to the events, with old file footage of me from years ago inter-cut with footage from "The Dying Rooms."I suspect that the authorities-that-be in China believed I was somehow behind an effort to humiliate China.So when I next applied for a visa, my application was turned down.What bothered me most, however, was how the event was reported by the rest of the world.This was such a gross exaggeration of what happened and it is the kind of hyperventilation that creates a backlash and does nothing to promote human rights. One footnote: I have since applied for a visa and received one.
BRC: One of your strengths as a storyteller is the insight with which you depict the complexities of mother/daughter relationships.What effects, good and bad, has this storytelling had on your relationship with your own mother?
AT: By writing parts of my stories in a mother's voice, I had to imagine what my mother had gone through, what she had hoped, as well as what she regretted.And in doing so, I learned a very important lesson about imagination.And that is that much of imagination is empathy and compassion.And that to have compassion you must have imagination, to imagine fully another person's life. I remember that after my first book came out, my mother was complaining about something that had happened to her. She was about to go on one of her two-hour laments when suddenly she stopped herself and said, "I don't have to tell you. You understand. You're just like me."And I realized that we both understood each other emotionally. My mother now has Alzheimer's Disease, but she retains this uncanny intuition about me, particularly about things that bother me. She'll call me and say, "I think you sad today."And she'll be right.She dreams about how I am feeling.She is always concerned over whether I have had enough to eat.And it's those little concerns of her that are no longer annoying but so precious.
BRC: The poet Molly Peacock says in her memoir, PARADISE, PIECE BY PIECE, that "my choice not to have children has defined my adult life... I had to make the choice from so far down in my own core that I was never wholly aware of it.It took insight to see and release it --- an insight I didn't always have.For this is a decision you do not make once but many times." You've stated that you have also made a conscious decision not to have children.In what ways has this personal decision manifested itself in your work as a writer?
AT: I include children in my stories and at times I imagine that they are my children.For some reason, they are not always the best-mannered kids.But they always contain the potential to break my heart.
BRC: What were the catalysts that lead you down the path to children's literature and how does the creative process differ for you from adult fiction?
AT: When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming an artist not a writer.I wanted to make picture books.The words in those books were secondary, for the pictures would inspire the words.In a way, I think that is still true for me.I write from imagery in my mind.In the 1970s, I started drawing again.I was working as a language development specialist with young children, birth to five, with developmental disabilities and I would create language materials --- pictureswhen I didn't find the ones I wanted that would motivate the kids to communicate.Again pictures inspiring words.As it turns out, my best friend, Gretchen Schields, is an illustrator, and her sense of imagery closely complements mine -- being lush, dense, and at times, gothic. So it was only natural that we use our collective imaginations and collaborate, with her providing the drawings and me the story.One of those children's books we did together, THE CHINESE SIAMESE CAT, is now going to be a TV production.
BRC: THE HUNDRED SECRET SENSES in particular deals with ghosts and the more mystical side of life.Tell us a little about your "yin eyes" and your own experiences with "yin people."
AT: Part of me would like to be a skeptic about the mystical.I like to think of myself as a rational person, not easily given to suggestibility and wishful thinking.But so much of what has happened me is outside the ken of my ordinary senses, outside of logic.I have had more than my share of invisible footsteps in broad daylight, apparitions, and prophetic dreams.And what is even more telling to me, I have had an inordinate amount of luck.What has happened to me as a writer is evidence to me of that.Certainly a bit of talent and hard work went into my work, but I don't think anyone would deny that what has happened to me was frankly phenomenal and unexpected.It is as though I have any number of unknown people, ghost writers, so to speak, who happily provide help, be it research or helping the book fall into the right hands. I don't know what to call this help --- "yin people," "ghosts, " "the muse," "the cosmic unconscious," or "God."But I believe that this type of luck is not simply a fluke. It feels very personal and specific.Perhaps it's a form of love.After all, love is also intangible, and mysterious. You simply feel it and believe it.And why anyone not want to believe in love?
BRC: You have expressed strong feelings about a book being judged for art's sake only, without borrowing on one's ethnicity as a writer. What do you see as the inherent dangers in one's work being judged on historical and cultural qualities instead of --- or as well as --- its aesthetic ones?
AT: From the beginning of time and book reviews, literary critics have always tried to find social, political, and cultural meaning in fiction.Students of literature are forced to do so --- to find the hidden symbols and all that. But I'll tell you a secret: The reasons writers write may be different from the reasons readers read. The reasons may be aesthetic or emotional or simply a matter of having fun. And we may not be consciously planting those symbols.I certainly don't. This is not to say that readers are wrong when they read for cultural meaning or what have you.But cultural messages are not necessarily my intention as a writer.I do become alarmed when I hear certain people saying that works by writers, particularly ethnic writers, should perform a specific role --- educating others or providing positive role models, for example --- because that assumes you can delimit what the work should be, as well as how it should be written. Art is created out of freedom and not a specious desire to win approval by others or to serve popular policies.And yet that notion that literature has a proscribed role is one that is sometimes put forth in literature classes and among some critics. It is the same rhetoric that conscripted literature to serve the tenets of Marxism and the cultural revolution in China. And as a result, a lot of good writers were trounced, and those who followed party line were placed on the pedestals. That's an effective way to kill good literature.
BRC: What do you see as the social role of literature, particularly of American literature in our society today?
AT: I don't think American literature should have any specific social role, except perhaps to provide pleasure and reflection. I think we are pretty good as Americans at discovering what the role of books is for each of us as we go along.I would hope, however, that part of that discovery is that reading good fiction can help enrich what you notice in life, that it is like a meditation on what details you might also observe and bring into your own life.Reading, I think, helps you live well and fully.
BRC: You have emphasized the need to "read a lot and know what you like to read."What do you like most to read and what is currently on your nightstand?
AT: What's usually on my nightstand is what I read as research.But at the moment, the pile is quite fun --- 120 stories selected for Best American Shorts Stories 1999.I am the guest editor and so I get to choose my top 20. Imagine it, pages of the best stories out there.It's rather like having the biggest box of the most delectable chocolate truffles, and my job is to sample them all.I once dreamed of having a job in which all I had to do was read good stories.And it's rather amazing to me that this is exactly what I get to do.The worst part of this is knowing I can choose only 20 and feeling that I will inevitably have to leave out many that I would have included as equally outstanding.
BRC: What authors would you personally find indispensable to a list of Writers of the Century?
AT: I would not want to list them all out of fear that I would certainly forget to name others and kick myself later.My list would be very long and I would certainly include writers, living and not, as well as those outside of American literature.
BRC: You've stated in past interviews that you "couldn't survive without writing."It's been four years since THE HUNDRED SECRET SENSES.What have you been doing to "survive" during these past four years?What will your next project be?
AT: I've been writing and rewriting and finding that writing does not get any easier. My saving grace and chief distraction have been my dogs, two travel-sized Yorkshire Terriers named Bubba and Lilliput, who weigh a combined total of 5-1/2 pounds.They adore me no matter how many bad sentences I write, no matter how much I have not accomplished. They sit on my lap as I work and we spend an awful lot of time reading various AOL message boards related to dogs. Aside from working on my next novel, I am also guest editing Best American Shorts Stories 1999 (published Fall 1999).In addition, I am beginning a TV production based on my children's book THE CHINESE SIAMESE CAT.I have a role as creative consultant, so it's just the fun stuff and none of the daily hard work of producing a 26 episode series.
BRC: What advice would you give young readers who want to grow up to be writers?
AT: Know why you want to write, why it's necessary.No one can tell you what those reasons are. But if you want to write only to be published then you will likely get discouraged and quit before that happens. An ambition for fame is not enough. The reason you write should be substantial enough that you would continue to write no matter what. I would also advise young writers to continue reading prolifically. Know the difference between good writing and bad.Be willing to revise. Go to readings by other writers and stay inspired.Don't ask them how much money they got as an advance.Ask them what they value in writing.
BRC: What do you find most frustrating, and most rewarding, about the way you are depicted specifically as a Chinese American writer and role model, and do you see this changing at all?
AT: It's annoying when reviewers refer to new writers who are Asian-American as "the new Amy Tan." Those writers must feel stymied and pigeonholed. And I feel positively calcified and decrepit. It's frustrating when people who are using my work in multicultural classes take the stories too literally.I saw one question on a study guide that asked, "If you are invited to a Chinese family's house for dinner, should you bring a bottle of wine?" The correct answer was supposedly based on one of my stories!It's amusing when I go on book tour and I am asked everything related to anything having to do with Asian-Americans, China, and even Chinese cooking.
BRC: You've stated that with your writing you want to "create a work of art."Which book comes closest to your conception of what you want your artistic creation to be?
AT: I have yet to write that book.Each book I write succeeds in ways aesthetically that I did not expect.Each book also fails in ways I would have hoped it would not. I think most writers are compelled in part to continue writing because we are trying to come closer to what our work of art should be. For me, language and a seamless and deceptively simple quality to the story are hugely important.
BRC: What are your thoughts on the millennium?
AT: 2000 is a big year for me.It is the year of the water dragon, and I am a water dragon, a year that comes up only once every 48 years. My birthday also falls right around the Chinese New Year. Nothing is fated, but I like coincidences and take them as reminders to pay attention.Mostly though, when I think of the millennium, I think I should back up my hard disk drive in case my computer crashes at midnight.
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