I have had my #Metoo moment: Amy Tan

JAIPUR: Amy Tan has written six compelling books and recently released Where The Past Begins, a memoir. While much of her fiction draws from her life, one particularly chilling episode in The Bonesetter’s Daughter grew out of the author’s own experience of being molested.

“I’ve had my #Metoo moment and it was similar to how I’ve described it in the book, only it was worse. My father was dying, my brother was already dead, and a youth minister had come to counsel me. I had this bad behaviour that was hurting my father more than the tumour in his brain, and that was making me cry. As I was sitting and crying, he (the minister) tickles me and says ‘Don’t cry’. I refuse and he pushes me on the bed and his hands go all over me.

“What’s worse is that he made me cry, which makes me vulnerable. He touched my genitals and said, ‘You have been doing bad things so you shouldn’t be talking about this because people won’t believe you’. He rendered me powerless with that one line and made me feel like I had something to do with what had happened,” she said.

“What people don’t understand,” she added, “is that an episode like this has repercussions. Now, when someone comes to tickle me, I’m probably prepared to attack them. I’m so glad that people are coming out and talking about this.”

Does she believe times have changed? “Well, in the Donald Trump world, we’ve gone back in time. A minister admits that he has molested a lot of girls and they applaud him! I feel that even if the world may be regressive right now, women are not going back. We’re going to be defiant and keep fighting,” she said.

Tan’s books revolve around the complex relationship between mothers and daughters, and in her first book, The Joy Luck Club, she explored the stories of four sets of Chinese-american mothers and daughters.

She wrote The Bonesetter’s Daughter when she lost two important people – her mother died of Alzheimer’s and her editor, Faith Sale, died of cancer. According to Tan, loss teaches you about what is important.

“When they were dying, there was this one question in my mind: What will I remember about them?... I had been with them both till the time they died, and when they died it was astonishing how unprotected I felt. Now, I had to protect myself,” she said.