Hi, I'm Olivia, and today's Happy Nugget! comes from Amy Tan, the American author who's
written such novels as "The Hundred Secret Senses," "The Bonesetter's Daughter,"
"The Valley of Amazement," and my favorites, "The Kitchen God's Wife" and her first
and incredible, best-selling novel, first published in 1989, "The Joy Luck Club."
"The Joy Luck Club" was made into a great film adaptation which is rare, but Amy Tan
was involved in the process and everyone working on the film was committed to making it the
best it could be.
From the dedication of "The Joy Luck Club," "To my mother, and the memory of her mother.
You asked me once what I would remember.
This, and much more."
From the beginning of "The Joy Luck Club," "My father has asked me to be the fourth
corner at the Joy Luck Club.
I am to replace my mother, whose seat at the man jong table has been empty since she died
two months ago.
My father thinks she was killed by her own thoughts.
'She had a new idea inside her head,' said my father.
'But before it could come out of her mouth, the thought grew too big and burst.
It must have been a very bad idea.'
The doctor said she died of a cerebral aneurysm.
And her friends at the Joy Luck Luck Club said she died just like a rabbit: quickly
and with unfinished business left behind."
The memories of Amy Tan's life, the secrets that are hidden within her mind, and her never-ending
curiosity fuel her writing, and as she weaves a thread of emotional truth from her heart
to the page, she invites us into a web of her imagination, and we get caught in the ride
One of my favorites books is "The Opposite of Fate," a collection of writings Amy Tan
describes as "musings on a writing life."
Amy Tan has a rare gift, an ability to feel things deeply, and express those feelings
in stories so vividly sometimes her writing will break your heart while making you laugh.
It's difficult for a writer to capture your heart and your imagination at the same time.
Difficult to do in fiction, challenging to do in non-fiction, yet Amy Tan does both with
grace, talent and humor.
Sometimes in the face of tragedy, being able to laugh can help us to survive.
From her wonderful book, "The Opposite of Fate," speaking of writing Amy Tan said,
"By the time I graduated, I was sick of reading literary fiction.
My osmotic imagination had changed into one with filters, lint traps.
I thought that literary tastes were established norms that depended on knowing what others
more expert than I thought was best.
For the next twelve years, I read an occasional novel.
But I did not return to my habit of reading a story a day until 1985.
By then I had become a successful but unhappy person, with work that was lucrative but meaningless.
I was in one of those situations that cause people to join a religious cult or spend a
lot of money on psychotherapy, or take up the less drastic and more economical practice
of writing fiction."
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California in 1952 to Chinese immigrant parents.
Her father escaped the Chinese civil war, and her mother barely escaped Shanghai before
the communist takeover in 1949.
As her parents struggled to make a successful life for their family in America, Amy Tan
was expected to one day be a concert pianist and a brain surgeon.
When Amy Tan was fifteen, her sixteen-year-old brother died of a brain tumor.
A week later, her father also died of a brain tumor.
To escape the unimaginable tragedy, Amy's mother took her and her younger brother half-way
across the world to live in Holland.
At seventeen, Amy Tan went to college and after being enrolled in pre-med her first year,
she switched her major to English.
Almost two decades later she quit a well-paying job to try to make a living as a freelance
business writer.
her previous employer told her to hone her skills in account management.
He said, "Writing is your worst skill.
You'll be lucky if you make a dime."
Again from "The Opposite of Fate," Amy Tan writes, "Imagine: There I was, in a
bookstore, recalling these past sins, about to read from my own published work.
I gave a silent apology to my fellow authors Jim Joyce, Joe Conrad, and Bill Shakespeare,
may they rest in peace.
And then my eyes landed on another familiar title: The Joy Luck Club.
I stared at those CliffsNotes, thinking to myself, But I'm not dead yet.
I flipped through the pages and found an obituary-like biography of the author, me, Amy Tan.
I was shocked to learn that I once had carried on 'a relationship with an older German
man, who had close contacts with drug dealers and organized crime.'
Could this possibly be describing my Franz?
True, he was older than I was, twenty-two years to my sixteen when we met.
And yes, he was friends with a couple of Canadian hippies who sold hashish, but I don't remember
them being that organized about it.
Whatever the case, does my personal history of having once dated a loser constitute the
sort of information needed by 'serious students,' as Cliff refers to them.
Will this make them 'secure in the knowledge that they have a basic understanding of the work?'
In page after chilling page, I saw that my book had been hacked apart, autopsied, and
permanently embalmed into chapter-by-chapter blow-by-blows: plot summaries, genealogy charts,
and—ai-ya!—even Chinese horoscopes.
Further in, I was impressed to learn of all the clever nuances I'd apparently embedded
into the phrase 'invisible strength,' which is what a mother in the book taught
her chess-playing daughter, Waverly.
According to Cliff, I meant for 'invisible strength' to refer to the 'human will,'
as well as to represent 'female power' and the 'power of foreigners.'
It was amazing what I had accomplished.
The truth is, I borrowed that phrase from my mother, who used to say something like
it to me whenever I was whining aloud.
She'd say, 'Fang pi bu-cho, cho pi bu-fang,' which is commonly uttered by Chinese parents,
and which translates approximately to: There's more power in silence."
Amy Tan's writing breaks cultural boundaries to reveal what lies at the core of the human heart,
what makes us all human beings—universal emotions.
Many critics, scholars, academics, and people try to label Amy Tan, put her in a box,
tell her what her writing should mean, or what it means, but Amy Tan remains
true to herself, an American writer.
What drives Amy Tan's writing is a desire to answer the endless questions she has about
her own past, her life, and life in general.
Some of the greatest writers in the world.
Those who are able to reach out and touch some part of our souls, are always trying to answer
their own questions with fascination, obsession and determination.
From her book, "Where the Past Begins," Amy Tan writes, "My mother cried whenever
she talked about her mother.
'They treated her like some kind of prostitute,' she once said.
'My mother was a good woman, high-class.
She had no choice.'
I said I understood.
And she replied: 'How can you understand?
You did not live in China then.
You do not know what it's like to have no position in life.
I was her daughter.
We had no face.
We belonged to nobody.
This is a shame I can never push off my back.'
She raged about the lack of respect people showed her mother and later her—as if they
lacked morals and feelings.
Her chest would heave like bellows, filling with despair, expelling it as fury.
She was right.
I didn't understand until recently, when I was treated like a pariah.
A few months after "The Joy Luck Club" was published, a relative complained to
my mother that she should not be telling me all these useless stories.
"She can't change the past," he said.
My mother told him: "It can be changed.
I tell her so she can tell everyone, tell the whole world, so they know what my mother
suffered.
That's how it can be changed."
Many of us live the stories of our parents, their shames, their struggles, their battles
as if they were our own.
We feel pain, indignation, and anger at our inability to make things right.
We can't change the past, but we do have power.
We can alter present perception.
We can build a better future by telling their stories.
In Unites States you can be someone no matter your social status, no matter where you came from,
no matter where your parents came from.
In the United States of America, you have the freedom to write your own story.
There will always be people eager to tell you who you are, how you should live
your life, and what you should think about your own work.
Don't let others put you in a box and label you.
Look within your own mind, heart, and soul for your own identity.
And that's today's Happy Nugget!
If you enjoyed this video please like it, share it, and subscribe.
As always, I link below the video anything I recommend.
I hope you have a wonderful day.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.
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