- Thank you, Amy, for being with us today.
- Thank you. Thank you.
- So for your first book,
I understand that there was a bidding war
between two publishers.
and when it was published,
"The Joy Luck Club" was an instant bestseller.
So looking back now, how did that feel?
- It was pretty unreal because I didn't even know
that my agent was going to New York
to sell this.
I had only three short stories that I'd written
and an outline.
And when she said she was gonna do that,
I thought "oh, she must be a fraud, because there's no way
that she could sell this to a New York publisher."
- Yeah. I mean, that was a complicated time
in your life, right? You were working as a,
as a corporate technical writer, I think?
- I was a business writer. It was, you know,
a lot of people think it's technical
because the companies are technical, but I wrote things-
everything from "rah-rah" motivational speeches
to, you know, training programs,
corporate, you know, kind of communications to people,
and especially during divestiture of AT&T
when they became, you know, 11 operating companies.
So yes, tech companies. But I was a business writer.
- But that's a really full life, right?
90 hours a week doing this other work
or doing all of this work.
And you were writing fiction sort of
at the margins of a busy life.
- Yeah. I, well, I didn't love what I was doing.
You know, the business writing was
was great in one sense, because it was freelance.
And I had these clients who were very kind to me
but I never had grown up thinking that I had a passion
for telecommunications or account management
with a Big Eight firm or anything like that.
And I started writing fiction
as a way to give me something more meaningful.
That I would be doing this, but without expectation.
I did not need to make a living doing this.
I could do it for the love of it.
And for what I was getting out of it, was, which was a lot
of realizations of who I was and how I became this way.
- That- that's a, that's a really powerful perspective,
I, I would imagine, looking back.
So I read that, that you had said that you felt compelled
by a subconscious neediness to know not a need to know
but a neediness to know.
I would love to have you help us unpack
that a little bit. What does that mean?
- Well,
neediness is always there.
It's perpetual.
You're always starving for some kind of answer, but it
it really started in childhood.
Because everything that happened to me, I would question.
I don't remember a time
in my life when I didn't question things.
I- I thought it was normal for everybody to question.
And perhaps it came from my father a bit, being a,
he was a minister and he questioned himself.
"Am I being good enough?"
I didn't question myself in quite that way.
Although I might say, well, "who is this God?
And what does he think of me?
And why does he think that?" I would ask myself,
"why am I being treated this way?
What did I do? if I intended to be good,
but I'm perceived as bad,
Why is that?"
Or if somebody called me a racist name,
and I'm six years old and they say I'm a chink, or worse.
And I think, "what makes me different?
What is being Chinese?"
I would look at my leg.
"Is this a Chinese leg?"
"If I eat too much Chinese food,
will I become more Chinese?"
You know?
So those are the early questions that have a lot to do
with identity.
I can look at those same questions
from childhood and ask questions about who I was
as a childhood or why we are, you know, we end up
believing certain things based on what's told to us.
My thing in life was not to believe; to ask the questions
and find the answers myself.
- So "The Joy Luck Club" hits the public,
and your fame is- is astronomically increased.
How did you cope as a writer to separate that kind of
solitary introspection with all of this adoration?
- I never dreamed what happened with this bestseller.
I think I'm, I'm more realistic about who I am
than most people.
So what I did is I wrote, I- I sat down and I wrote some,
they were almost like 10 principles of my life.
At the top of the list was family.
It had to do with what's important.
And the writing had to do with knowing the reasons I write.
That they were very personal, very private, and that
I shouldn't do something simply because it would-
might make me more famous.
So for example, film. To not get
sucked into something,
with the idea that the reward would come afterward.
Everything had to be worthwhile
in the moment that I was doing it.
And in a way it was because I did not trust success.
It's something that is given to you.
And if you expect it and it doesn't last,
you could be destroyed by it.
So I think I started off with ground- grounding rules early.
And it, it still was very difficult to me because
I didn't want to believe it.
And it took me about seven months before I did think, "well
maybe I can write the rest of my life."
I remember telling my husband that and saying, "you know?
I think this isn't going to go away.
I might be able to make a living doing this."
- Let's talk about why so many people
love your books. To me, when I read,
when I read your books, I said, "Oh my God, that's my mom.
That's my family."
It- so much of it echoed.
But I- I'm wondering if it's really the
the particular of Asian American culture
or if it's the universal of the mother-daughter dynamic.
- You know, I have my reasons for writing.
And a lot of it is discovering
how all of these events in my life and even the events
in my mother's life and my grandmother's life
has led to a transference of many elements.
Whether it's a way to deal with
a tragedy or, or turmoil.
My mother, for example, became suicidal
as a result of watching her mother kill herself.
Fortunately, I didn't take on that quality,
but I took on the need to make decisions and choices
for myself. Because that is the antidote.
Not to be pummeled by,
by bad things that people voiced on you
or that naturally occur, but to realize
and to take those choices.
Now, I think that within my intentions for writing,
that, yes, it did involve a mother.
The only mother I've had,
who happens to be Chinese American and an immigrant.
And so people identified with that.
People who had immigrant parents, Chinese, or, or other.
And people would identify being a daughter,
with a mother they didn't always get along with.
Or a mother whose daughter was not grateful
for what they tried to pass on.
And all of those emotional situations, emotional conflicts
I believe are what people identified with
and why they found the book relevant and wanted to read it.
- You have had, your mom have had a very difficult past
in China. Tell us a little bit more about that.
- My mother was, um,
well she was born in 1916
and her- her father died when she was quite young, 1919.
During the pandemic. and her mother was left a widow
with her and a younger son.
In those days, they were pretty much
at the mercy of whoever would take care of them.
That would be my grandmother's brother
who was a cheapskate and,
and also a drug addict later.
Would steal money from people.
So it was, you know, not a good situation for her.
And my mother also, um,
was very pretty.
Now you would think, well, that's an advantage.
In a way it was, but she was made to feel
she was so beautiful that this was
much of the value of who she was.
And she ended up marrying, in a sort of arranged marriage,
a pilot who turned out to be a very, very bad man,
because everybody said "this is,
you are the- you were an orphan" basically,
after her mother killed herself.
She lived in the family, this wealthy family,
for a long time. Never felt she was part of it.
And then got married off to this, this playboy in essence,
a pilot who was unfaithful from day one.
Brought his mistresses home.
She, you know, had to endure this marriage.
She had a son who died in her arms.
She fell in love with my father, a very kind man.
She endured going to jail.
She came to the United States for love.
And she now was nobody.
She lost her language, her ability to communicate.
She became an invisible person.
And, uh-
and- and that of course led her
to become overwhelmed.
Suddenly she was no longer quite as beautiful.
She was looked at as not beautiful
also because she was Chinese.
Those are some of the complexities of her life.
But what it also came across to me as were these warnings.
You know, if you fall in love with somebody who treats
you mean, you'll want to kill yourself. On the same,
by the same token, she'd say
"be sure you have a good job, be a doctor,
because that way if you get married,
and you don't have to get married,
but if you get married and he treats you bad
you can leave because you have your own money."
So it was, it was that kind of thing
that her experiences shaped me.
Not an ex- that I became exactly the person that she is,
but the lessons gave me a-
a way to see my life
and what was, what were the pieces that I want to take?
I wanted to be strong.
I didn't want to have regrets in my life.
And that was a direct result of how my mother raised me.
- Do you ever, Amy, feel pressured to be sort of
the spokesperson for the Asian American community
because of the,
the high position that you, that- that
that you have, you know, in the writing world?
- There are expectations. And I understand them,
that if you are public,
that you have the opportunity to speak for a large-
a larger number of people,
especially in regards to social justice.
I'm very careful however, because there are people who think
"what right does she have to represent us?"
And as we know, the AAPI community is not homogenous.
We're many different peoples from many cultures
and we share some things in common.
We are linked, but we have to keep that in mind.
And I cannot speak for the whole AAPI communities.
I can talk about the, you know, things that have to do
with the needs or bringing awareness to the needs.
Then working with some- or been part of organizations
like the Asian Pacific Fund
or, um, Family Service Agency.
And their people who serve populations that
need additional help.
So I'm aware of why the myth does not really hold up.
And I can talk to that,
or I can do campaigning for candidates who are AAPI
which I think is incredibly important.
I can speak somewhat to racism.
But I can't do everything. Also in terms of time.
So I- I try to be,
I try to be responsible.
But I- I cannot assume I
know everything, and I can't speak for everybody.
I hope people understand that, you know?
I'm not trying to put myself out as some kind of expert.
- So the AAPI hate crimes are definitely on the rise, right?
Incidents of hate crimes
against Asian Americans in the United States have been
rising at an alarming rate since the pandemic.
And there are recent horrific crimes
in our neighborhoods, in our communities.
And they've been widely publicized in the media.
The killing of the 84 year-old Thai man in,
in San Francisco.
And the mass shootings that has happened in- in- in Atlanta.
Are you afraid when you leave the house?
- No, I'm not really afraid physically.
I don't fear that as much as what I might say to somebody
if they were to direct an insult,
a racist insult to me.
Should I react?
Should I ignore it?
You know, and I think you have to judge
because some of your reactions, if you were to counter it,
could result in violence, you could be punched.
And- and so I do have to assess that.
It's really interesting, you know, I've, I've received
a lot of racist insults over the years on my Facebook page.
And they're everything you could imagine, from the
"go back to where you come from," you know,
I could say "Oakland?"
Or- or "you eat dogs!" You know? And I say,
"Well, actually my dogs are, you know,
as everybody knows, you know,
are the light of my life."
But it does no good, you know,
to say these things. In part because they're not looking
for rationalizations or rationa- rational answers.
They- they're going to continue to believe this.
I had a whole slew of them just the other day
because I had-
on Biden's Facebook page, you know
I would say for certain measures that were really important
to me, I'd say "thank you, President Biden
for embracing all cultures," or "thank you, President Biden
for looking at how we can stop the insanity with,
with weapons." You know, killing a lot of people.
And I would get 5,000 likes.
But I would get 500 comments full of vitriol.
A lot of them racist comments.
I was going to write them down,
because we don't do enough in reporting
what the, the hate comments are.
We don't have a central clearing house.
When people say there are 3,500 incidents
of hate crimes against Asians?
No, that is just a tiny amount
of the number of hate crimes that are happening.
And I just wish that we had a clearing house
so that even if they're just hateful messages
that don't accompany violence, you know if they're com-
you want to know if they're coming from
a group of people
who could erupt into violence.
- Tell me about what it feels like to have a film crew
follow you around documenting your every move.
- It is an intrusion of privacy certainly.
And it was one of the reasons I did not want
to do a documentary.
But, Jamie, the director,
James Redford, was a friend. And I absolutely trusted him.
And when we did interviews, it was like
talking to a friend, having intimate conversations
about things that were important to both of us.
So with those conversations,
other people just kind of fell away.
There were times when it was intrusive,
but you have to keep in mind
they kept the crew very, very small.
So it was almost easy for them, except for the big camera,
to fade away in the distance.
Every now and then
I wondered how they were going to use this footage,
but I never asked to see it.
I, I wanted to give Jamie the freedom to
create the documentary he wanted.
And I saw it for the first time in its completed form
when it was almost finished.
I found out later Jamie made that decision,
was forced to make that decision,
because he was in failing health.
And he gave that to me.
I watched it, answered back immediately.
And that was the last thing he read. My email.
And he started the process of dying.
He died a few days later.
So, you know, you think about
the inconvenience of a team following you around.
You think about the intimacy of conversations
with two friends.
Totally made it worth it for, you know,
for me and- and for him. To have that friendship
and have it come out in a documentary.
- You are such an amazing narrator, an amazing storyteller.
What about teaching the next generation?
What does that look like?
- You know, I've always resisted teaching.
I, I thought being a published writer doesn't
mean you have the credentials to teach.
But having done the documentary I started thinking,
what I've done is
in a way, talk about my life and see how it led
up to this point of my becoming a certain kind of writer.
And so when MasterClass, an online program,
asked if I would do
a class on writing,
At first, as with the documentary, I said no.
And then later I realized, no,
I could talk about writing that has to do with
emotional memory and imagination.
And, and so that's what I- I've done.
My class is about something I believe is relevant
especially to first-time novelists.
First-time short story writers.
And that is, you do draw from your past oftentimes.
And your childhood. It's just, there, brimming,
waiting to get out.
And I think that my class has a lot to do with
looking at your past, your moments and how this formulates
who- the voice you have as a writer and
how you create stories
out of these situations and conflicts.
- Well, I admire your humility.
I admire your centeredness.
And what an amazing journey you've had.
So thank you for being with us today.
- Thank you.