Amy Tan Returns to Fresno Roots to Close San Joaquin Valley Town Hall

Amy Tan closes out the San Joaquin Valley Town Hall lecture series Wednesday in what is a homecoming.

The day after she was born in Oakland, she moved to Fresno, where her parents lived. Her father was a minister at the First Chinese Baptist Church. She lived in Fresno for her first two-and-a-half years. She still has family and friends living in the area, which she has visited several times.

“My earliest memories are in Fresno, and of course, the heat,” Tan said in an interview with GV Wire previewing her talk.

She remembers her father’s station wagon — a woody — and swimming at a public pool.

“I remember a tree in the front of the parish house, and I remember picking fruit with my parents or just sitting. I didn’t pick anything. I just sat below, and my brother dropped some piece of fruit on my head and made me cry,” Tan said.

Tan will speak at the Saroyan Theatre in downtown Fresno. The event starts at 10:30 a.m.

“You will hear the surprising facts of why it was very unlikely that I would become a writer or an artist. I will also show the ways in which I eased into this latest book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, and what went into that — learning to draw, for one thing, learning to observe birds and how that came about — which are skills that also relate to writing,” Tan said.

GV Wire is a sponsor of San Joaquin Valley Town Hall.

About The Joy Luck Club

Tan is best known for her bestseller The Joy Luck Club.

She started writing fiction on the side. Her main job was working in the business world.

“I was writing business articles, and I was doing that about 90 hours a week. I thought my life was pretty meaningless because it was on subjects of telecommunications and account management, which were not exactly a passion of mine,” Tan said.

She always loved to read, so she started to write fiction. It helped her discover things about herself.

“Part of fiction is representing a kind of personal truth — maybe it’s a description of love gone awry or being betrayed or finding out years later that your parent did love you, or whatever it is. Those kinds of moments are so startling when you’re writing a story that it takes you back and it becomes, that’s how it felt like. That is what it was like. And that is the personal truth that I look for. And when I found it the first time writing fiction, I knew I would do it the rest of my life, regardless of whether I got published. It was that worthwhile,” Tan said.

She did get published, and The Joy Luck Club put her on the map. She did not expect it to be a success.

“When the book got published, I was startled. I thought my life was out of control. I never dreamt it, so why is this happening? I didn’t trust it. I thought it’s going to go away — do not get comfortable with it.

Fame meant, Tan said, everything she ever wrote — like notes — would be archived. But fame has its advantages. Tan was touring the Omaha Zoo during her GV Wire the interview.

The book also became a hit Hollywood film. Tan said she saw the dailies as the movie filmed. She estimates she has seen the movie 10 times.

“I know all the lines because I wrote them. I’ll tell you the best thing about watching that movie was the time I went to the premiere with my mother,” Tan said.

During one emotional moment in the movie, when a little girl watches her mother die, the premiere-goers cried. Tan’s mother was the only one with a dry eye.

“I asked, ‘How did you like it? Are you OK?’ And she said, ‘In China things were worse. This is already better. This is good,’” Tan said.

The post Amy Tan Returns to Fresno Roots to Close San Joaquin Valley Town Hall appeared first on GV Wire.