Reflecting upon the colorful and often dark history of her family, best-selling author Amy Tan discussed her fiction - and the tumultuous life that inspired it - during her Distinguished Speakers Series lecture on Wednesday night.
The acclaimed author of "The Joy Luck Club," who spoke to a sold-out crowd at the Mainstage Theatre at the Center for the Arts, began her lecture by saying she would focus on "how I was fated to be a writer."
Tan shared the family stories that served as inspiration for her writing and drew laughter as well as gasps of surprise and sorrow from the audience.
"I believe I have my mother, in large part, to thank for my morbid imagination," Tan said. "My life is excellent fodder for fiction."
She recalled how her mother, who Tan described as "very spiritual," would ask her to consult a Ouija board for advice, including child-rearing tips.
"She told me to ask, 'Amy treat me so bad. Should I send her to Taiwan school for bad girls?'" said Tan, impersonating her mother. "I consulted the board and said, 'No.'"
Tan's mother, who became obsessed with death after watching her own mother commit suicide, suffered from serious depression and often tried to kill herself.
"I remember she would open the car door while we were going down the highway," Tan said. "My father had to pull her back."
Tan said her father was also a spiritual influence on her life. Like each of his 11 brothers, Tan's father became a Protestant evangelist, but he left the ministry to become an electrical engineer. Tan reflected upon her father's strong faith while her brother was dying of a brain tumor in 1966.
"(His faith) was the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we can't see it," she said.
A year after her brother's death, when Tan was 14, her father also died of a brain tumor. Tan and her mother moved to Europe, where her mother's depression increased.
"Whenever my mother became unhappy, she wanted to move," said Tan, who attended 11 schools before graduating from an academy in Switzerland in 1969.
According to Tan, her chaotic life inspired her to become an author.
"I want to make sense of it," she said. "I need a narrative to surround the chaos and put it in order."
Tan spoke very little about her life since 1969 or the publication of her first novel, "The Joy Luck Club," which remained on The New York Times' bestseller list for 40 weeks and has since been taught in many classrooms.
Mijeong Park, a lecturer of Asian studies, brought a group of her students to see Tan's speech. Park, who teaches Tan's works in her class, "The Asian American Experience," expressed mixed feelings about the lecture.
"I was disappointed in some ways," Park said. "I wish she could have talked more about herself rather than her parents."
Still, Park was curious about the dichotomy between her father's Protestant beliefs and her mother's spirituality, which was rooted in Chinese myth.
"I would like the chance to ask her more about that," Park said.
Tan drew laughter from the audience when, early in her speech, she held up a copy of Cliff Notes for "The Joy Luck Club" and commented on the challenge of being subject to academic scrutiny.
"I saw that my book had been chopped apart, autopsied and analyzed," Tan said. "Sometimes, I feel like the students who read my work know my work a hell of a lot better than I do."
As a Chinese girl growing up in America and Europe, Tan said, she was faced with many questions about her cultural identity.
"When I'm with my family, I feel strikingly American, but also very Chinese," she said. "It's one of the most interesting questions you can ask for the rest of your life."
Rahul Patil, a graduate student in mechanical engineering and a native of India, said Tan's status as an expert on cultural identity inspired him to come to the lecture, despite not having read any of her books.
"She was a neutral person who observed different cultures and learned from them," Patil said. "That is what we are doing as international students."
However, Julie Mann, a junior majoring in English and Spanish who has read "The Joy Luck Club" in class, said she was inspired by the extent of the author's imagination.
"She was bolder than I thought she'd be," Mann said. "To me, her speech showed how imagination can be everywhere."
After giving a lecture that lasted just over an hour, Tan took questions from the audience. During the question-and-answer session, one man asked Tan about her dogs. In response, Tan reached under the lectern, pulled out a large black bag, placed it on the stage and reached in.
To the crowd's applause and laughter, Tan pulled out a small brown dog.
"His name is Bubba," Tan said.
Another person asked Tan if she had a message she wanted to send to women.
"It's traditionally been the case in families that women are the keepers of the secrets," Tan said. "We can still change history even after it's done. It is up to us to decide what should be remembered."
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
