AMY TAN
The bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife is the subject of Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir (May 3 on PBS). The American Masters documentary explores the life and career of the groundbreaking author, 69, including the traumas she has faced in her life and how her writing has helped her heal.
What does Unintended Memoir
mean? I never intended my last book [2017’s Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir] to be a memoir; I thought it was about writing. But it just kept coming back to all the things
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imagery and obsessions. I wrote a
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it a memoir.
When your mother had a health scare with angina, was that pivotal in beginning your career? I had that moment ÜhiÀi ÌhoÕ}hÌ] There’s so much that I don’t know about her. I spent so many Þi>ÀÃ noÌ Ì>lkĶn} >LoÕÌ ÌhĶn}Ã] noÌ LiĶn} VloÃi Ìo hiÀ° kniÜ Ìh>Ì Ķv Ãhi lĶÛi`]
would do that. I started writing these stories that became The Joy Luck Club.
Is there another book coming? I’m work
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what had happened that I had to switch what I was writing because suddenly the story I had been writing seemed to be trivial. There was a lot of racism suddenly going on in the
ÜoÀl`° /hiÀi Ü>Ã ÌhĶÃ hÕ}i `ĶÛĶ`i] >n` mÞ
story no longer seemed relevant.
Who do you read? Stories by Lydia Davis. Ài>` > loÌ ov Lookà >LoÕÌ n>ÌÕÀi] >LoÕÌ LĶÀ`Ã] > niÜ oLÃiÃÃĶon ov mĶnip iÀn` iĶnÀĶVh] Üho Ķà > n>ÌÕÀ>lĶÃÌ] voÀ iÝ>m«li°