The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life

by Amy Tan (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $19.09

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $4.15

  An unbearably moving, intensely passionate, deeply personal account of life as seen through the eyes of one of America's best-loved novelists. 'When I began writing this history, I let go of my doubts. I trusted the ghosts of my imagination. They showed me the hundred secret senses. And what I wrote is what I discovered about the endurance of love.' So writes Amy Tan at the beginning of this remarkably candid insight into her life. Tan takes us on a journey from her childhood, as a sensitive but intelligent young Chinese-American, ashamed of her parents' Chinese ways, to the present day and her position as one of the world's best-loved novelists. She describes the daily difficulties of being at once American and Chinese and yet feeling at times like she was truly neither. Most significantly, and heartbreakingly, she tells the history of her family: the grandmother who committed suicide as the only means of defiance open to her against a husband who ignored her wishes; her remarkable mother, whose first husband had her jailed when she tried to leave him; and the shocking deaths of both her father and husband when Amy was just 14. How this weight of history has brought itself to bear on the adult Amy looms large in her own story. Ghosts, chance and fate have played a part in her life, and 'The Opposite of Fate' is an insight into those ancestors, the women who 'never let me forget why these stories need to be told'.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.22

  A personal account of life as seen through the eyes of one of America's best-loved novelists. Over the course of her writing life, Amy Tan's essays and articles have appeared in numerous magazines, journals and anthologies, much to the delight of her fans. Here she has put together her musings on what she sees as the opposites of fate. This work should illuminate her fiction and give her readers a rare glimpse into her heart and mind. Born into a family that believed in fate, Tan has always looked for ways to make sense of the world - other than the excuse of destiny. From retelling the tales of her ancestors, to redecorating her house, and from seeing ghosts to strapping on skis, her narrative journey reflects on fate's opposites - lucky accidents, choice, memory - as well as on the comfort of accepting her past.