As a child Amy Tan believed her life was duller than most. She read to escape. Her parents wanted her to be a doctor and a concert pianist. She secretly dreamed of becoming an artist. She began writing fiction when she was 33.
The Holy Ghost of my father and the Chinese ghosts of my mother.
The American Dream and the Chinese family's interpretation of that.
Free books from the library every week and reading books that appeared on the banned book lists.
Writing secret letters to my friends about running away to Haight-Ashbury and writing thank you letters as my mother dictated them to me in bad English.
The early deaths of my older brother and father and my mother's belief that I would die next.
An SAT score in the 400s for English and SAT score in the 700s in Spanish
Listening to my mother and her friends gossip in Chinese. Understanding Chinese but not being able to speak it.
I've been puzzling over the social form known as email. More often than not, people send me emails addressed with a salutation of the kind used with the other form of correspondence once simply known as a letter: "Dear Amy" or "Hi Amy" or "Hello Amy" or "Hey Amy", "Dear Ms Tan" or even "Dear Amy Tan". Occasionally, there is ...
My best excuse for not having written a novel in the last three years is that I wrote libretto for an opera, "The Bonesetter's Daughter," which, by coincidence, is the name of a book I wrote. The composer is Stewart Wallace, who's done a number of operas, including Harvey Milk. We met at Yaddo the year that the cops were chasing OJ down the freeway (that's how he and I remember ...
After Bubba died, Lilli was depressed. She stayed at the top of stairs waiting for him. She slumped around, walking stiffly and slowly like an old dog, and after all, she was twelve years old and arthritic. She did not eat much and all the old treats held no interest. That was one of the reasons I decided to get a new puppy, King Bombo. Bubba had never really played with Lilli. But ...