Amy Tan

Interview with Amy Tan

By Riley

In case you just came out of a cave that you’ve been living in for the last 20 you’ll know that Amy Tan is a world famous author. Most literate Puebloites know that All Pueblo Reads is a project sponsored by the library and this year the book is The Joy Luck Club by, you guessed it, Amy Tan. As an interviewer, I was intimidated, this is after all a person who has been interviewed by Toni Morrison, so I had some big shoes to fill. What I discovered is that she is funny, very nice and easy to talk to and she has a lot to say.

PULP: Will this be your first time in Pueblo?

AT: Yes, we have driven around the four corners area but I don’t think that’s too close to Pueblo, so I’m excited. I have been planned to come to Pueblo for the last two years.

P: You have a connection to Pueblo; will you tell us a bit more about that?

AT: I’ve been planning to visit for two years because my brother and sister-in-law moved to Pueblo two years ago and they took over the Abriendo Inn. Our who family, or members of our family, my sister, my cousin, there are a number of us, is coming for this reunion and that’s part of the reason this will be such a wonderful experience being in Pueblo.

P: So you’ll be staying at the Inn?

AT: (Laughing) Of course, of course. It’s free lodging!

P: Some readers may not know that you wrote the libretto for the Bonesetter’s Daughter. It just finished it’s run with the San Frisco Opera, what was it like working on that?

AT: I think that like many people I had no idea how you would create an opera. To write a libretto, you think of it as this very peculiar way of talking, the lines are all different and it doesn’t rhyme, do you have to write it in Italian first or something. But it was actually much simpler than that. It’s a very natural way of creating a story with music. Music is all about emotions and opera is about expressing emotion through music and action and acting on stage and these incredible voices, so what I had was this amazing experience of creating an opera with these very talented people and seeing that on stage. It is the quality of live performance. You have all the excitement and nervousness of creating a live performance with a difference audience every night.

P: I know you don’t usually read reviews, but this got great reviews…

AT: We were very lucky. You can never guarantee what an audience or reviewer’s reaction will be. It was well received, we had great audiences, but more importantly for the opera house is that we were sold out; we were grateful for that. It would be terrible to have your opera there and work so hard and put so much heart in it and to look out and there’s no one there, but we were lucky.

P: Aside from opera and writing, you’re also known for your role in the Rock Bottom Remainders. Is there a different cathartic experience for you in creating music as opposed to that in writing?

AT: Yes and no. I started off as a child playing piano, practicing one hour a day. My parents had this expectation that I would be a concert pianist, but I knew secretly that I would never be good enough and I really want to be good, so I was frustrated that I had to play one hour a day. What happened though is that when I played music I saw stories and I would entertain myself and make those hours more bearable by imagining the stories as I was playing. It is such a natural part of my listening to music that I’m surprised that more people don’t it. I’m somebody who goes to the symphony more often than to the movies. I remember talking to someone who played in the symphony and asking them about the story they saw with this music and they say, “Story? I don’t see any story.” So in that sense, music is to me story. It conveys emotions, places, moods. I also find what’s different and that’s playing music, performing music is that very quality of performance, in that you are performing in front of somebody. When I’m writing I get to pretend that nobody will ever read this and during the act of writing, nobody is reading it, the only person who reads it, maybe, in various stages, is my publisher. I don’t even let my husband read it. So it’s a very private act. Music requires you to humiliate yourself immediately.

P: What I’ve heard about the Remainders is that you’re a big hit, so I doubt you’re humiliating yourself.

AT: (Laughing) You know part of what it is with the Remainders is we don’t take ourselves seriously. We know we’re not great; we’re good enough to not offend a lot of people who paid money to see us. But, I think the audience knows we’re having a good time and they then have a good time. There’s nothing more humiliating than taking yourself too seriously and finding that people think you’re really not that good. So yes, it comes with the attitude that we’re not being too serious. We are ridiculous that’s for sure. I dress in these ridiculous costumes, in this dominatrix leather with a priest cap, these boots and fishnet stockings. I sing Leader of the Pack and These Boots Were Made for Walking and I come across as this very mean person. In my new song I won’t be quite as mean – it’s My Boyfriend’s Back. So they’re silly songs, songs that many people recognize above the age of forty.

P: You’ve described your writing method as osmotic. For all of the aspiring writers, can you tell us more about that?

AT: Osmotic means that whatever is happening around me, whatever I’m reading, whatever I’m experiencing, sickness, health, beauty and nature, even concerns about the environment or politics, those all feed into the nature of writing. It’s not that everything goes into to the writing, I don’t take these things and jam them in there, but they become a part of me. Some of it becomes quite relevant, almost serendipitously so. It’s as though the writing itself is a filter and all these things go through me as I experience them. Writing becomes the filter and what should be noticed about all of this suddenly becomes very apparent. That’s what I mean about osmosis. Writing is not done simply in your imagination or without any influences in the present. It has a lot to do with memory and with imagination, interior questioning and meditation. It has a lot to do with your life and the larger world.

P: In your latest book, Saving Fish From Drowning, you write as a male character. Is it more of a challenge to write a male character?

AT: Well only a few characters are male, the narrator is a woman. But it was fun. I’ll leave it to the male readers to decide how authentic it was. As a writer, I believe that at times there is a voice that is common among men and women. What I used as strictly male were the notions of romance or sexuality or adventure that somebody might see in a male friend or in certain activities. This particular male had more to do with dog training, so that was more of a quality to that voice. How this person acted as a dog trainer.

P: The narrator says, “Am I not human, even if I’m dead?” What are your thoughts on the death, the afterlife, or reincarnation?

AT: You know, secretly I think ever writer you talk to, writers who see writing as necessary, writers who write beyond making a living, they are often consumed with thoughts of death and what that means, the thought that one does not exist, possibly, beyond this body. So it brings into question constantly what death means, what existence means, what immortality means. If you’re not living and breathing does that mean you cease to exist? Or, are you changed, do you know more, do you feel more, are you now suddenly perfect? Are you still human, being human means that you still have doubts, you don’t always know things that you had hope to and you still have all of those emotions, still, toward other people, that’s what I mean about the qualities of being human. When I think about what we would like to last beyond our existence here, I think a lot of it would be emotions, love, love for another person, we would like to believe that people who have died still have love for us. And that when we are also no longer in this physical plane we can still communicate with other people.

Authors’ note – Can I just say at this point, WOW?

P: It’s has been almost twenty years since Joy Luck Club came out, are there things that would be different if you wrote it today?

AT: Well no. I mean I have a different relationship with my mother since for one thing she is no longer here. But, as I grew older and watched her grow older, our relationship changed, so naturally if I wrote this story today, which I have in some respects, it would necessarily be different. Bibi in Saving Fish is the narrator but she’s dead. I think that my mother would still have these questions. She had this desire to feel more and also she believed she felt too much which is a preoccupation of Bibi Chen’s. The nature of fractured families, though, has been with us forever. I mean look at King Lear or Hamlet if you’re going to talk about males and fathers, or fathers and daughters. [There are] Plenty of examples of fractured families throughout literature. That will always be a major theme like immigration, or politics, or real estate, or wealth. So with a story like Joy Luck Club, people can read into it whatever they want, whether they’re a mother or daughter, or thinking about relationships or miscommunication. Readers tend to find what’s relevant to them.

P: I know you have an interest in politics; do you have any predictions about this upcoming election?

AT: Predictions? You know a lot of people say, “Don’t say anything or you’ll jinx it.” There’s so many people who don’t want to hope or don’t want to hope out loud. So, yeah, I’m involved in politics and not just this election but for quite a while with something called The US Islamic World Relations Forum. Like many people, I’m concerned with what’s happening in the world. I’m concerned with the hatred and how that leads to all kinds of things, including wars. And, I’m not going to make a plug for any candidate, but I will say that I am very much for Obama. Part of that goes to who I am as a writer. Somebody was asking me today to recommend a children’s book, an all time great children’s book. I thought and said, “It’s The Little Prince.” The reason is, again it’s an osmotic thing, we think about our situation today, is that it’s a book for all ages because at all ages we experience loss or we become lost and the Little Prince is able to find what matters by looking beyond assumption. He reminds us to not limit our hope to what we assume is realistic. He thinks that you can still find what some think is forever gone. It’s a good book to read when you’re becoming cynical about the world, in other words, a book for many to read now. The little prince today is Obama.