Despite the subtitle, I bought this book expecting it to be more of a memoir than it actually is. I think Amy Tan’s main purpose in writing it was to set the record straight on a variety of topics, beginning with an inaccurate summary of her life that turned up in an edition of CliffsNotes. She does so in essays that directly address the points that need to be made, and also tosses in other writings that range from a college commencement address to an item she wrote for the newspaper when eight years old.
As such, it’s somewhat disjointed and uneven. Some parts appealed to me much more than others.
Early on, she provides some personal and family history, which includes plenty of elements readers will recognize from her fiction (a character who goes one day each year without speaking, for example, and most certainly the memorable voice of her mother). This is followed by a section in which she argues that readers ought not assume that her stories are autobiographical. (Maybe they aren’t, but reading between the lines in yet another section one can conclude that she sees a self-portrait in The Kitchen God’s Wife.) There’s also an eloquent rebuttal to the people in publishing and educational circles who insist on pidgeon-holing her as a representative of her ethnic group, gender, color, etc. and looking to her for politically correct lessons. That kind of writing, she feels (and I agree) amounts to propaganda, not literature. She says, “I write stories about life as I have misunderstood it. To be sure, it’s a Chinese-American life, but that’s the only one I’ve had so far.”
There are points at which it seems the lady protests too much. She mentions a journalist friend who says, “Any attention is valuable … If you receive any, you should be grateful.” I rather agree with that as well, because Tan’s path to literary success appears to have been unusually smooth. Better to be misunderstood by some harebrained people than completely ignored. This is not to suggest that she doesn’t deserve success; she emphatically does. But she too acknowledges that she has been lucky.
Her luck has not been only literary, since apparently she’s had more than her share of close brushes with death. For me, the final section is devastating. It describes a mysterious illness that overtook her and the frustratingly slow process of getting a diagnosis. Because of the story described in my own book, I recognized her discovery that most doctors and even professional medical societies are clueless when presented with something out of the ordinary. I recognized the cynical but helpful voices she found on Internet discussion boards, and her conclusion that, rare or not, this thing afflicts a heck of a lot of other people.
I found most of this book utterly fascinating. It sparked an interest in going back and rereading her novels. It reaffirmed an earlier impression that Amy Tan is someone I’d be glad to know (an impression that faded when I later visited her Facebook page). Most importantly, in discussing her life and what has been important to her, she shows how much of the joys and fears of this existence are common experiences
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