Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir

Right. It's that.

Where is her photos?

Where did I put them?

I used to have this all organized.

And now...

Okay, let me see.

This is my mother as a young woman with her friends.

This is the back of the mansion

where she lived, just out of Shanghai.

Okay, so...

In my office is a time capsule.

Seven large, clear plastic bins

safeguarding frozen moments in time,

a past that began before my birth.

During the writing of this book,

I delved into the contents...

memorabilia, letters, photos, and the like...

and what I found had the force of glaciers calving.

I am not the subject matter of mothers and daughters,

or Chinese culture, or immigrant experience

that most people cite as my domain.

I am a writer compelled by

a subconscious neediness to know,

which is different from a need to know.

The latter can be satisfied with information.

The former is a perpetual state of uncertainty

and a tether to the past.

You know, when you're writing,

I think you're naturally going through

some kind of subconscious philosophical construct,

your own cosmology,

how the world is put together,

and how events happen,

and what's related, what's coincidental.

Okay.

It's not as though I want to change the past.

It's really trying to understand

how these things come together to bring you where you are.

If you want to visit the overflow crowd

or if we've hit your time where you need your down time...

- Whatever you want. - No.

It's whatever you want, actually.

I often think I'm just dreaming my life.

You know, I've really... there've been so many times

I've nearly died...

car accidents or whatever.

Maybe something really happened,

and I've been unconscious or in a coma all these years,

and I've dreamt this life up.

Please join me in welcoming Amy Tan.

What I'd like to do tonight

is tell you what kind of experiences went into me

to propel myself into writing.

A lot of people think, well, you know from the...

My father was the oldest of 12,

and he became an engineer.

Being the oldest, my father had the most responsibility,

but as it turns out, he was also the most handsome,

the most articulate, the best English.

Many women would have loved him,

but he chose my mother.

This is 1959.

Here we are having a carefree moment.

The family goes off into the future.

In this shot,

that's my little brother, and that's me.

I have fond memories of my mom playing piano.

She would play Mozart, Beethoven, Bach.

She was brilliant.

They really wanted us to be

engrossed in the American values,

and that's why I don't have an accent.

They really wanted to be perfect Americans,

but I know later in years, they also wanted

to make sure that we understood

where the Chinese culture came from,

our heritage, and what was respected.

This is me on my fourth birthday.

She's my best friend to this day,

the one at the end, Sandy.

Her mother and father were members

of the original Joy Luck Club.

All my parents' siblings were in China,

so I always considered Amy and her siblings to be my cousins.

The Joy Luck Club was formed by a few couples,

all Chinese, who decided

they wanted to be an investment group.

They would pick stocks, review them,

and then they would socialize afterwards.

Mostly women played Mahjong.

The men preferred to play cards.

Then, about midnight, they would have a feast.

We would love it as children,

you'd get to stay up late,

get to see our aunties and uncles.

What I remember is there's this comfort level

of being with like people,

especially for my mom who grew up in Shanghai.

Auntie Daisy, Amy's mom, was also from Shanghai.

I can imagine how comforting that would feel.

I loved Amy's dad, Uncle John.

He had a really warm smile,

really warm and welcoming demeanor.

My father's avocation was the ministry,

and it was my mother who made him quit the ministry

because it was a life of poverty.

He went back to his former occupation

in engineering.

He worked seven days a week.

My mother worked as well.

He also was going to school

and getting a master's degree,

and in his spare time,

he was still substitute preaching.

Auntie Daisy was a spitfire.

She was small, she spoke rapidly.

I could hear her voice, like, "Amy, ah..."

With this furrowed brow.

This is a mother who would tell me things like,

"You should never let anyone tell you

who you should be or what you should do."

"You should never let anyone talk down to you."

"You should never feel you have to get married

if you don't wanna get married."

"And no one should tell you you must have a baby,

not your husband, not your mother-in-law,

not your friends."

She said, "But you should have a good job

because if you do get married and your husband is mean,

you can leave him immediately without a question."

My mother had other advice like that,

like crossing the street.

A lot of parents look both ways, you know.

My mother did the look both ways,

but she said, "You don't look, maybe a car comes,

smash you flat like a sand dab,

both eyes on one side of your face."

You never forget after that,

you never forget.

I remember this fear of shame.

When it was my birthday, I was so afraid

my mother would do something like

bring Chinese food.

And I remember being relieved

when she brought the requisite cupcakes.

My father was an amateur photographer

and he liked to pose people.

Posed, posed.

He was a good photographer.

See how they loved my older brother,

the golden child.

They were constantly comparing me and my brother, Peter.

He was always doing well.

He skipped a grade, he was independent,

and polite, and behaved.

And they would say, why can't you be more like Peter?

I loved my brother, Peter. He was my hero.

He was the person who taught me so many different things.

And he never made himself to be superior.

But I really sensed it,

especially from my father.

This past year,

while examining the contents of those boxes,

I was gratified to learn that many of my childhood memories

were largely correct.

But there were also shocking discoveries

about my mother and father,

including a little white lie they told me when I was six.

When I was in the first grade,

the woman came to our school,

took me into this little room,

gave me, I don't know,

she probably called them puzzles or something

because I was a little kid.

About a few weeks later,

I came home from school,

and there she was in the living room,

and she was talking to my mom and dad.

And then the woman left.

And my parents said to me, they were all excited and they said,

you know, you took this test, and the lady said

to us you are smart enough to be a doctor.

You are going to be a doctor.

So that's how my career was decided,

on the basis of a test.

Now I was gonna be a doctor

and a concert pianist on the weekend.

A lot of people think I'm joking,

but this truly was the expectation.

When I was nine years old,

my mother's version of believing in me

was believing that I could be anything,

anything she wanted

the best piano prodigy this side of China.

I resented the piano.

It was a little slave master,

you know, where I had to get everything right.

You know, the right rhythm, the right fingering,

the right notes, the right expression.

So I didn't really get a chance to enjoy music,