"My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the World of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.
'Libby-ah,' she'll say to me. 'Guess who I see yesterday, you guess.' And I don't have to guess that she's talking about someone dead."
So begins Amy Tan's third novel, The Hundred Secret Senses. Although it has flown up the best-seller lists in the month since its release, the book is a risky departure for the 43-year-old writer, with its emphasis on spirits, magical time-shifts and other unearthly phenomena.
Tan spoke enthusiastically about her book, but admitted that she feared it would be ridiculed as "Chinese superstition." She sat for an interview on the balcony of her San Francisco home, where she surreptitiously lit up a cigarette.
"I don't smoke in public, it's not a good image, it's not a good role model," she apologized. "Not that I actively set out to be one."
With her tiny Yorkshire terrier, Babbazo, snugly ensconced in her lap, Tan, a brilliant smile often belying the frankness of her words, talked about the burdens of fame, the world of Yin, and her struggles with her own emotional demons.
SALON: Have you felt the need to be a role model ever since the success of your first book, "The Joy Luck Club," in 1989?
AMY TAN: I don't feel the need to be a role model, it's just something that's been thrust upon me. Teachers and a lot of Asian-American organizations, for example, say to me, "We need you to come and speak to us because you're a role model."
Are you comfortable with that?
No. Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden. Someone who writes fiction is not necessarily writing a depiction of any generalized group, they're writing a very specific story. There's also a danger in balkanizing literature, as if it should be read as sociology, or politics, or that it should answer questions like, "What does The Hundred Secret Senses have to teach us about Chinese culture?" As opposed to treating it as literature -- as a story, language, memory.
Are you finding more or less of that pressure to be categorized?
It's lessening in the United States. Other Asian-American writers just shudder when they are compared to me; it really denigrates the uniqueness of their own work. I find it happening less here partly because people are more aware now of the flaws of political correctness -- that literature has to do something to educate people. I don't see myself, for example, writing about cultural dichotomies, but about human connections. All of us go through angst and identity crises. And even when you write in a specific context, you still tap into that subtext of emotions that we all feel about love and hope, and mothers and obligations and responsibilities.
Next page: A mandate carried in the heart
