Amy Tan (INTERVIEW)
Amy Tan
“The Boomer List”
Interview
with Kam Williams
Joy Luck Amy
Born
in Oakland, California
on February 19, 1952 to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan is an award-winning
writer whose novel, The Joy Luck Club, was translated into 35
languages and adapted into a hit feature film. She resisted her mother’s pressure
to become a doctor and concert pianist.
Instead,
Amy chose to write fiction. Besides The Joy Luck Club, she is the author
of The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The
Bonesetter’s Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and Valley of Amazement, were all New York
Times best-sellers.
She
also penned her memoir, The Opposite of Fate; two children’s
books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa; The Chinese Siamese Cat; and
numerous articles for magazines. In addition, Amy served as co-producer and
co-screenwriter for the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club and
was the creative consultant for Sagwa, the Emmy-nominated PBS television
series for children.
She
wrote the libretto for the opera based on her novel The Bonesetter’s
Daughter. With music composed by Stewart Wallace, the opera had its world
premiere to sold-out audiences in September and October of 2008 at the San
Francisco Opera.
Here, she talks about being profiled in The Boomer List, a
PBS American Masters documentary featuring icons of the Baby Boom Generation.
The special premieres from 9-10:30 PM ET/PT on Tuesday, September 23rd
(check local listings).
Kam
Williams: Hi Amy, thanks for the interview. I’m
honored to have this opportunity to speak with you. We’re also both Boomers born
in 1952.
Amy Tan:
Thanks, Kam.
KW:
What interested you in participating in The Boomer List?
AT:
I thought it would be interesting to examine who we are as a
generation. I also thought it would be fun because I’d worked with [director] Timothy [Greenfield-Sanders] before.
KW:
Harriet Pakula-Teweles says: Thank
you for The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife and all your fine writing
since then right up to The Valley of Amazement which I just finished. You’ve
been on plenty of best-seller lists. How does that compare to representing your
generation on the The Boomer List?
AT:
I suppose you could call me representative in terms of my
going from being a part of an invisible set of writers who were outside of the
mainstream to becoming a mainstream writer. That, people thought was very
significant, breaking through some sort of barrier that I wasn’t aware of. I
wasn’t trying to break through barriers. I was just writing a book. Before,
there were plenty of books out there that had been written by African-Americans
which were always treated as somehow on the periphery. They’d be in Ethnic
Studies classes but they eventually became part of mainstream American
literature. In that sense, I do think my novels have contributed to that
development of American literature.
KW:
That reminds me of when I took a course in college called
The Great American Short Stories and all the writers we covered were white
males. On the first day of class, I raised my hand and asked the professor why
all the great American writers were white males.
AT:
I went through exactly the same education that you’re
talking about. I was an English major, and the only woman represented on the
course curriculum was Virginia Woolf. I ended up taking a special class in
Black literature as part of a summer program, and Asian literature classes still
didn’t exist yet.
KW:
Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier says: You are among the most successful female writers. Only about
a dozen women laureates have won the Nobel Prize for Literature since its
inception. Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin had to take the pseudonym George Sand
to become a French novelist and memoirist. Historically, it has been difficult
for women to thrive in the literary world. How can we break the glass ceiling
and what advice do you have for aspiring writers?
AT: I really don’t know how one breaks through unless you have more diversity on the judging panel. What I have observed is that the winners are often books about larger political world issues. All I know is that my books would never win a prize like that because, in the judges’ minds, do not concern larger world politics. As a judge, which I’ve done, you look for literary merit overall, but so many prizes, especially the Nobel, have a political tinge to them. Not to say that’s wrong. It also has to do with what people perceive the value of literature to be, and what function it should perform, as opposed to simply being its own art form and entertaining.
AT: I really don’t know how one breaks through unless you have more diversity on the judging panel. What I have observed is that the winners are often books about larger political world issues. All I know is that my books would never win a prize like that because, in the judges’ minds, do not concern larger world politics. As a judge, which I’ve done, you look for literary merit overall, but so many prizes, especially the Nobel, have a political tinge to them. Not to say that’s wrong. It also has to do with what people perceive the value of literature to be, and what function it should perform, as opposed to simply being its own art form and entertaining.
KW:
I found it interesting that your mother focused more on
teaching you about being a female than about being Chinese-American?
AT:
I think that was because she felt the greater impediment,
the greater danger, had to do with being a woman. Among the lessons she taught
me was that I should never let anyone else look down on me or determine how I
saw myself. She felt that you can be constrained by the way that people think
in any culture.
KW:
Yet, she also told you that you weren’t beautiful.
AT:
I look back at pictures of myself as a teenager and laugh. I
certainly was not beautiful. I had acne, hideous glasses, a hideous hairdo, a
puffy face, all the usual things for a 13 year-old. My mother was not one to
coddle and say, “You’re so beautiful, darling. People just can’t appreciate
it.” My mother always saw danger in beauty and said: “If you try to rely on
beauty, you’re going to find yourself lost after awhile because beauty doesn’t
last, and because people are attracted to beauty for the wrong reasons. So, you
should be glad that you’re not beautiful.” That was her perspective. [Laughs] I
think I was very fortunate that at that point when I was forming an image of
myself I understood that I was going to have to depend on something else to
find someone who was interested in me. My mother never stopped talking about
how beautiful she was and how much that had gotten her into trouble. The worst
of men were attracted to her.
KW: I saw some pictures of you as a
teenager, and I think you looked very cute. When you look in the mirror today,
what do you see?
AT:
I’m very content when I look in the mirror. I’m happy with
the way I look. I’m just me. I’ve grown into this face.
KW:
As a child you also felt ashamed of being Chinese. Why was
that?
AT:
By the time I was 6, I had gradually become aware of the
fact that I was different. And as my family moved up the economic ladder, we
moved a lot, to better and better neighborhoods, and the classrooms in my
schools became whiter and whiter, until eventually, I was the only Chinese girl
in the class. By the time you reach 11 or 12, no child wants to be too
different. You kinda want to look like everybody else. I had that same feeling.
I wanted to have blonde hair and a perky nose and have boys look at me and
admire my figure. But that didn’t happen. So much of it had to do with the boy-girl
thing which became a hallmark of popularity and acceptability in junior high
and high school. I just wanted that like everybody else. And I believed that I
didn’t get any dates because I was Chinese.
KW:
What inspired you to swim with sharks after you turned 60? A
desire to do something daring and dangerous?
AT:
No, it was that I literally wanted to discover something new
in the way that Darwin
did in discovering new species. It’s such an ambitious and almost impossible goal,
but it would keep prompting me to look for something no one had ever noticed
before. In some way, we are all different from everyone else in the world. That
could be manifested by noticing something no one else has noticed. In Indonesia, I
found the ugliest ant condo, and I decided, “I’ll take that.”
I also sensed that one way I could discover something new
was by exploring the ocean, because there are so many unidentified species
there. So, swimming with whale sharks with some conservationist friends became
part of that adventure. I had not anticipated that it would be so
life-changing. You simply abandon fear for the pure excitement and beauty and
joy and surrealism of being around the world’s largest fish, and having them
look you right in the eye. I even accidentally touched some of them at times as
they started to turn when swimming close by.
KW:
Do you think China
is a lot like the United
States today?
AT:
Superficially, yes. But I think China has gone beyond just being
more Western. There’s a lifestyle, an attitude, and a pace unlike that of the U.S. It’s
hyper-speed. As Baby Boomers, we were the last American generation that could
assume that we would own a house. However, that’s the norm now in China.
Acquisition! And over the top acquisition! People will pay $100,000 for a
designer purse. You have no idea how hyper-acquisitive people are in China. I don’t
think many Americans would find they have much in common with them. I have
relatives in China
and I have seen them change dramatically as a result of this new
acquisitiveness. Here, a lot of younger people don’t identify with Baby Boomers
because they see us similarly. We were the big bulge and set a lot of the
trends in the consumer model of what was popular. China is doing that now as well.
But they aren’t desirous of being like Americans.
KW:
Documentary filmmaker Kevin Williams says: While the
Boomers did accomplish much good in breaking up some of the social and gender
stratification in our country, many Generation Xers resent the Boomers' cultural
domination in the 80s and 90s, and even now as child-raising adults. Do you
think that Baby Boomers, as a group, are aware of this animosity towards them
on account of how they shaped our country at a high cost to future generations
and where they’ve taken the U.S. economically, spiritually and socially?
AT:
I’m certainly aware of it, but I don’t know that all Baby
Boomers are. I think there are different strands of our generation. One that
was very interesting was behind our grassroots efforts which got some traction
on behalf of the anti-war movement, women’s liberation and equal rights for
gays. We’re the last generation with the expectation of upward mobility and the
home ownership and the credit card mentality. Those coming behind us feel that
debt is what we’ve left them with, and the idea of having it now, but paying
for it later. I think they also resent the amount of our pollution. We were the
start of McDonald’s and the fast food culture and of massive consumer waste. But
we also did a lot of positive things, entering the Peace Corps, campaigning for
George McGovern, loving Jimmy Carter for what he was doing for social good, and
I think many Boomers still have that consciousness. I would say to those who
really despise Boomers: Don’t lump us all together. The credit card Boomers led
us down a very nasty path of debt and unemployment.
KW:
The bookworm Troy Johnson question: What was the last book
you read?
AT:
I’d be embarrassed to admit the name of the last one I
really read. It was a funny, fluffy book. But before that, I reread Love in the
Time of Cholera. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307389731/ref=nosim/thslfofire-20
Next, I’m planning to read Middlemarch which, oddly enough,
I’ve never read. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0141439548/ref=nosim/thslfofire-20
KW:
What is your favorite dish to cook?
AT:
Cauliflower and Brussels
sprouts, sautéed together in oil and garlic, and garnished with capers and
lemon. I’m vegetarian. I don’t eat meat. I could talk about how bad it is for
the environment, but…
KW:
Let's say you’re throwing your
dream dinner party—who’s invited?
AT:
I’m always terrible at that “If you were stranded on a
desert island” type of question. I think, if I could have dinner with almost
anyone, I would prefer it to be with people gone from my life, rather than
important political figures like President Obama and President Assad to see
what they’d have to say to each other. I want to see loved ones again and to
hear about things that we didn’t have time to talk about. So, it would be the
impossible dinner list of people I know I would never be able to see again.
KW:
The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest
childhood memory?
AT:
I remember sitting under a tree in the summer, at 2½, when
something fuzzy and round fell on top of my head and made me cry. I picked it
up, and it looked like a peach. But my mother says it must have been an apricot
since we only had an apricot tree in the backyard. We were living in Fresno at that time.
KW:
What are you working
on now?
AT:
I’m working on a book about writing. It’s not a how-to book.
It’s really about what Ezra Pound call “The Undertow.” The undertow of your
life. All the things that come to the surface and all the things can drag you
down and take you away forever. I’m trying to capture that sense of who I am
from the very beginning, and of what I’ve noticed about life, and death, and
relationships. So, I can’t really say what the book is about yet because I still
have to find out more of what this writer is about first.
KW:
Wow! I look forward to reading it. Well, have a good trip. I
hear you’re leaving for Europe today.
AT:
Yeah, I’m headed to Holland, Germany, Iceland
and Italy.
My big thing is I need to make sure I get enough sleep everyday.
KW:
Thanks again for the time, Amy, and bon voyage!
AT:
My pleasure, Kam.
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