He could say words in church and make people go up there and pledge ten percent of their money. We have the gun and all that kind of stuff. Ruth arranges to have the document translated, and learns the truth about her mother's life in China. 16 stories.” She was right because those 16 stories became The Joy Luck Club. The fact that I had those thoughts when I was very young was an indication that I was a very gloomy kid. I got scolded for that one “B.”. They’re relying on everybody else’s opinion of who they are. He rapes Precious Auntie after killing her father, the Bonesetter, and unknowingly fathers Lu Ling. And I saw Rachel’s hands clasped over her chest, and her face was bloodless, and her hands were flat, and I was scared, because this was the little girl I used to play with. I hope it especially continues to support the arts in that direction. She wasn’t a perfect mother, but a lot of the things she did, she really did do out of love. AMY TAN is the author of The Valley of Amazement, The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Opposite of Fate, Saving Fish from Drowning, and two children's books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat. What It Takes is an audio podcast produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: public service, science and exploration, sports, technology, business, arts and humanities, and justice. Upon its publication in 1989, Tan’s book won enthusiastic reviews and spent eight months on The New York Times bestseller list. She looked at my work and said, “Where’s the voice? It gave her a new perspective on her often-difficult relationship with her mother, and inspired her to complete the book of stories she had promised her agent. I think I was a gloomy kid. I think I’ve always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. Speaking now only of your writing career, what setbacks or detours have you had along the way and how have you dealt with them and learned from them? Today Amy Tan is one of America’s most popular novelists. So I had hours and hours of time where I was just left to my own devices, drawing pictures. It had nothing to do with being American. Amy, please count me among your admirers. And there, away from everybody, away from the past, away from people who always thought I was this nerdy little girl, I exploded into a wild thing. Lu Ling's autobiography makes up the middle section of this book. What drew you to literature when it was not part of your family life? Sometimes I think that it’s pure luck, I won the lottery. I remember feeling that pressure from the time I was 5 years old. I had playmates with parents who thought, “Hey, they got a “C,” who cares? Getting this story out, I realized, was a gift that she was giving me. Was there anyone who gave you a first big break? For example, that all people should have freedom of expression and when you carry that to a religious point of view you realize different people have beliefs about life after death, and karma and reincarnation, and damnation and salvation, or nothing. That may have happened because I was bilingual at an early age. So I just about this very large morass of beliefs and how muddled they are getting, especially as the world gets more crowded, but also much more international, where a mix of things must co-exist. You start talking about things. I remember that starting at the age of six I had thoughts of suicide. Self-doubts, fear of failure? That the people who have achieved more probably are those who always say, “I don’t deserve this.” Because they were doing exactly what they loved to do, and what ended up being quite helpful, maybe, to other people. She also began to write fiction. I think the closest it comes is simply being storytelling for others. And it was scary to live but it was scarier to die. Amy Tan: I go back to this idea that I only discovered when I was older. Now, growing up in an American culture, of course, I also had other models. My mother actually believes that my older brother’s life was devastated by something similar to that. What you’ll find ultimately is that this whole question of who you are is a very, very interesting question and having two cultures to add to the mix of it makes it even more interesting. No more chances. I found out later that he had seduced a young girl, left his wife and ran off with a 16-year old. She never had a life of her own. Then there was The Joy Luck Club and endless weeks on the bestseller list. The book recounts her difficult childhood and complex relationship with her mother, as well as her evolution as a writer and collaboration with her longtime editor Dan Halpern, in an intense exploration of the relationship between memory and creativity. In the world of book publishing, there is never a comfortable balance point where you either have enough praise or enough criticism. Well, I wasn’t going to be around to disappoint her anymore. I wanted to bury it so that what I thought was the stronger, more independent, American side could come out. I was trying very hard to see if I understood the whole book, because it had a lot of big words in it. That’s what I grew up with. When it was discovered that I was reading this, my parents called in the family minister to counsel me, actually, the youth minister. You have to do this for your family.” I was never going to speak to my mother again. It made me so excited because she had said it in the most constructive way — not simply saying, “This isn’t working, this is bad, this is nothing.” She said, “Look at this. Looking back from this point in your life, what is your advice to young people who are starting out? In fact, I told her, when she wanted to be my agent. Lu Ling believed that young Ruth had the ability to communicate with the spirit world, and often expected her to produce messages from the ghost of Lu Ling's long-dead nursemaid, Precious Auntie, by writing on a sand tray. I said to myself when I was 17, “I’m not going to have anything to do with anything Chinese when I leave home. The book Fate! Most importantly, I wanted to know about her past. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. I give credit to something beyond me. Do you think your conflicts with your mother were really over generational issues, or cultural issues, or both? So if you were to say to me when I was 17, “You know, one day you’re going to write a book about Chinese people and about your relationship with you mother and how much you love your mother,” and all this stuff, I would have said “You are crazy. How did you get in a position to do something with your life? I couldn’t have written The Joy Luck Club without having been there, without having felt that spiritual sense of geography. I think self-knowledge is important and that embraces so many things. In 1987 you traveled with your mother to China, where you had never been. I didn’t want to become a suspicious person. Here’s money. They didn’t know who I really was. And I think I needed an outlet for all that imagination, so I found it in books. It makes you look terrible.” They were shocked too. But if I ever write anything else, maybe ten years from now, I’ll let you know.” She pursued me, and she kept saying, “You have to write more fiction.” I said, “I can’t pay you anything.” She said, “I’m by commission. I really loved my father. Lu Ling's story goes further back, describing Precious Auntie's childhood as the daughter of a local bonesetter. You’ll find out how many American assumptions you have and it will give you a sense of perspective and humor about the whole idea that identity is what you create. by Amy Tan. That was like taking care of clients, doing estimates, going after contractors and collecting bills. Tan's children's book, Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat was adapted into an PBS animated television show, also named Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat. Tan’s fourth novel, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, returns to the theme of an immigrant Chinese woman and her American-born daughter. Tan again explored the complex relationships of mothers and daughters in The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001), in which a woman cares for her mother, who is afflicted with Alzheimer disease. He said, “That’s your strength. The other books we had in the house, besides Bibles and medical textbooks of physical anomalies, were the World Book Encyclopedia and Readers Digest Condensed Books that had been discarded by various people. It was almost sinful how much I liked it. Amy Tan: I took this trip to China as a way of fulfilling a promise. Chang's wives were played by Mary Finch, Natasha Ramirez Leland, and Erin Neff. Was there a defining moment? It was amazing to me that words had this power. What I fear most is taking the criticism too seriously, the negative criticism or the extremely positive reviews, and not knowing which one I should believe. Here, she meets her first husband, Pan Kai Jing. No matter what field you’re in, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. I wrote about a girl whose parents were educated, were professors at MIT. Sometimes I think it’s because I’m a baby-boomer and what I wrote about are very normal emotions and conflicts that many people have, so somehow it struck a universal chord. It said things like “My name is Amy Tan. She worries that her elderly mother, Lu Ling, is gradually becoming more and more demented. I didn’t play chess, so I figured that counted for fiction, but I made her Chinese-American, which made me a little uncomfortable. Lu Ling's family approves of the marriage, but Precious Auntie violently opposes it. I start smoking, I start drinking. Some people are going to lose out, but there also might be some compromises made in the world. I’m never going to get along with my parents, never going to feel accepted by the other kids, never going to make it because I’m going to be held back with this enormous burden of — something or other — pressure, not being good enough. It was people discouraging me that got me into writing. And so she was very proud, because she measured success in terms of money, which is what I started to do as well. That was wonderful. If my mother didn’t want me to date boys out of fear that somehow I would lose myself to this boy and ruin my life, I chalked up all of her fears to Chinese fears, not generational ones. eNotes.com will … You have to be displaced from what’s comfortable and routine, and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes. I would probably read them a book that I’ve written. A few months later, he began to have headaches and a few weeks later he began to have convulsions and a few weeks after that he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. That was a wonderful period in my life. I remember once one of my playmates from around the corner died, probably of leukemia. If I thought lightning had eyes and would follow me and strike me down, that’s what would happen. Once Ruth learns the details of her mother's past, she gains a new understanding of her and her seemingly erratic behavior. There are so many things that I could laugh about and see that my sisters were the same way, that we had inherited things from my mother. And so they decided to give me the award. Amy Tan: It’s a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life. Once I realized that and stopped taking it as a personal attack to torture me and make my life miserable, then I could look beyond it. They are cultural if you’re raised bi-culturally and, in this day and age, who’s not? A lot of bad things have happened in my life. It’s just easier to ahead and do that. You still get into fights but you learn to just pick what’s important and say, you know, it’s not so important really for me to win this one. Nobody really cared that much about literature, although my father was a natural storyteller, being a minister. I also worry about those who praise my work for what I think are the wrong reasons. So as stories, I loved fairy tales. The Bonesetter's Daughter. How would you describe yourself? You start talking about things. The paperback rights sold for $1.23 million. All Rights Reserved. Maybe I should do this. Suddenly I’m hanging around with these people in this environment where I know nothing about anything. Amy Tan: I wanted to write stories for myself. You know, “Bad things happen for certain reasons. When you read about the Civil War, a lot of people, like my husband, can say my great-great-grandfather fought in that war. “You think I’m bad now? The work had become a compulsive habit, and she sought relief in creative efforts. In no other country do you have that opportunity. So, I think going to China was a turning point. A literary agent, Sandra Dijkstra, was impressed enough with Tan’s second story, “Waiting Between the Trees,” to take her on as a client. Maybe they weren’t the right things to do, but it really was out of love. That’s unfortunate, because it made me grow up wanting to deny that part of my family, of myself. The Bonesetter's Daughter, published in 2001, is Amy Tan's fourth novel. You think you’re never going to get over a hurdle, and you get over it. It’s fascinating and that makes every life worth living. I shortened my skirts, I put on makeup, I hung out with hippies. That was just play. Or people will say I’ve done a great service in helping with generational gaps. I worry about that within myself. I had backaches. Amy Tan: I think the conflicts were both cultural and generational. I remember one who sat at the foot of Thomas Mann and was reading Flaubert in French when she was 15. Success, not by how many billions of dollars did that company make, how many new products did you get out, but success of the magnitude that those scientists made when they pushed and pushed and pushed to prove that ozone was dangerous to the atmosphere. Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Bonesetter%27s_Daughter&oldid=1012614068, Articles needing additional references from December 2010, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 17 March 2021, at 10:30. My mother was convinced that this man was going to ruin me. It’s uniquely your own and you put the things in the basket that you want: the questions you want, the things that are important, the values, the ideas, the emotions. The opera condenses the novel's plot through various devices: it omits peripheral characters and the subplot about the Christian orphanage and expands Chang the Coffin Maker into the key villain. This is hard work, listening to her say the same laments in her life over and over again, but this time asking for more details. Her subsequent books, The Kitchen God’s Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses, have been bestsellers, and the film of The Joy Luck Club was an unprecedented success. Talk about pressure. I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I think books were my salvation. I must write no Chinese characters to prove that I’m multi-talented.” Or “No, I must write this way in a very erudite way to show I have a way to use big words.” It’s both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success. Fortunately, I didn’t. Those were the things that helped me decide what I was going to write. She and her husband lived well on their double income, but the harder Tan worked at her business, the more dissatisfied she became. As a result of that, I’m a very strong advocate for freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the danger of banning books. I met a wonderful writer there named Molly Giles. Why are you a writer? In 1988, Amy Tan was earning an excellent living writing speeches for business executives. I meet writers these days. They published my little essay and they gave me a transistor radio and, at that moment, there was a little gleam in mind that maybe writing could be lucrative. Creative Writing: Learning from the Masters provides readers with a window into the extraordinary world of writing fiction. You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you’ve just said. And that I could succeed in. Like much of Tan's work, this book deals with the relationship between an American-born Chinese woman and her immigrant mother. Deep down, I wanted to be an artist but I knew you couldn’t make any money being an artist. Narrated with Amy Tan the audio book version of Tan's novel "The Bonesetter's Daughter". I suppose if my brother had become older it would have transmogrified into something different and made it a strength in his life, a turning point. I have the luxury to do exactly what it is we all need time to do, and that is just think about the mystery of life. For years, Lyme disease made it impossible for Amy Tan to continue writing. How did you finally get started writing fiction? So none of that history before then seemed relevant to me. Her subsequent novel, The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), confirmed her reputation and enjoyed excellent sales. Fire me.” You know, this is my adversity, this is a low point in my life. If it’s a failure, will you think what you wrote was a failure, that the whole time was wasted? Amy Tan: I did some writing in class when I was young just as everybody did. 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