WITNESS FOR THE (SELF) DEFENSE
The Opposite of Fate, A Book of Musings
by Amy Tan
Illustrated with black and white photographs
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 416 pages. $24.95
Reviewed by Marie Giordano

Amy Tan writes in the introduction to The Opposite of Fate, that she chooses characters in her fiction who question what they should believe at different moments in their lives, and the pieces in this new book are linked by her fascination with fate, even to the point of her struggle with lyme disease, a debilitating disease she has battled since 2001. This collection of Tan's speeches, essays, reminiscences, fragments and articles gives us a peak into another side of the writer, the closest to autobio- graphy as we are likely to get.

The subtitle, A Book of Musings, could be misleading, being the definition of musing usually refers to the act of pondering or meditating, which these articles and essays far exceed in both sagacity and erudition. Gathered here are thirty-five narratives divided into seven sections where Tan writes her pet gripes and experiences, such as the writing and making of the film of The Joy Luck Club; her exhausting book tours; singing with the Rock Bottom Remainders (a group of writers including Stephen King); thin sketches of her family life as a child; a short essay she wrote as an 8 year-old entitled What the Library Means to Me, and more. The writing throughout the pieces in the collection remains conversational, yet because the book is not a memoir it lacks a certain intimacy of the sustained personal story.

But never mind. We recognize the familiar arresting voice of Tan's fiction, and we are privileged to hear the well stocked mind behind it speak out. The Opposite of Fate is not a mere recital of anecdotes and life events, nor is it a series of idle musings, but because it is mostly composed of previously published pieces, we get but a taste of what could be expanded and luminous in a memoir.

Frederick Buechner wrote in his memoir, The Sacred Journey, that memory is more than a looking back to a time that is no longer; it is looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still."

Tan's fictional characters do just that. They speak, cry, move from a vivid past, as in Bonesetter's Daughter when LuLing learns of her husband's assassination by the Japanese: "I was not there when it happened, yet I saw it. The only way I could push it out of my mind was to go into my memory. And there in that safe place, I was with him, and he was kissing me when he told me, We are divine unchanged by time.'"

We are all haunted by ghosts because they are not ghosts, they are real people embedded in real situations, past and present. The Opposite of Fate speaks of ghosts, or of yin", a made-up word of Tan's, who help her write her books. Here in the personal essay, as well as in fiction, the disentangling forces giving shape to a life are memory and nostalgia. Isabelle Allende has said her writing is an attempt to understand and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that don't seem to torment normal people.

Tan handles many of her own insecurities with humor, and at times her writing is laugh-out-loud-funny, reminiscent of the piqueish Garrison Keillor or Anne Lamott. She tells of one experience in the waiting room of a medical specialist's office where she was about to take her enema for a sigmoidoscopy when suddenly the receptionist blared, ... Say, aren't you Amy Tan, the author?... Hey everybody say hello to Amy Tan!" (She is regularly plyed with inquiries ranging from What should we do about human rights in China?" to Would you mind looking at my manuscript? It's in the car.")

Another plight Tan must endure as a famous author is the bane of 48,291 websites in her name and still counting. Much of the information on these sites, according to Tan, is erroneous and she devotes eight pages to making disclaimers to errata such as her teeth indeed are not discolored by a nicotine habit (as reported in The Los Angeles Times) and she has no children, unless you consider, as she does, that her dogs are her children. She balks at the idea of Joy Luck Club Cliffnotes, a distinction she views with both disdain (they didn't get her bio quite right) and awe.

A particularly moving piece is an emotion charged account of a close friend's brutal murder. It's not the horror of the story that yanks at the heart so much as Tan's personal pain irrevocably colliding on the page with sorrow and remorse. In the final piece, for which the book is titled, Tan gives an emotional account of her struggle with lyme disease, an enfeebling and devitalizing disease she continues battling to this day.

In other essays she confesses she has been excavating the vestiges of her mother's many selves most of her own adult life. Again and again she tells how her mother's past has shaped her, her sense of danger, her regrets, the mistakes she vowed never to repeat.

It's no new observation that Tan's fiction finds its center in her mother and the mother/daughter multifarious, painful and complex relationship. As a writer, she can change the past and manipulate the truth a hundred million directions.

As a literary celebrity, Tan shrinks at being recognized in public and will deny her identity when approached. (In one interview I read she told of her encounter with a clamoring fan by responding, Me- Amy Tan? Do I look that old? Give me a break.") Perhaps she is like her mother in the putting on another exterior, for although humorous, it is a means of keeping the secret of self protected. This may explain why her husband of nearly three decades appears only as a shadow in the book.

When writing about the art of writing she is at once profound and inspiring. Her introduction to Best American Short Stories 1999, included here, is illuminating to be sure, and one that students of writing would do well to read more than once.

Finally, Tan launches forth against critics and the literary world at large for misunderstanding her intentions and categorizing her as a Chinese American author. (Here is where the subtitle, A Book of Musings, fits, for another definition of musing is to murmur, grumble, and complain.")

She refutes notions that her aim as an author is to demystify Chinese culture for American readers or pave the way for other Asian-American authors. Great stories resist generalizations and categories," she asserts. She is exasperated at being compared with other Asian American authors. "I write," she explains, stories about life as I have misunderstood it," and she expresses no small chagrin that her books and essays are on required reading lists for Ethnic and Asian-American studies, and asks, What about American literature?"

It strikes an awkward chord when an author is impelled to publicly defend her/himself against critics, to fight back with a "you people just don't get it!" attitude, but most of Tan's rants are legitimate arguments. Consider that her success as a writer has been dismissed by some critics as a gift for lifting the rice curtain so mainstream non-Asian readers might get the inside scoop on Chinese history and culture. Her exasperation is understandable when it is assumed a book with Chinese-American characters encompass all the demographics and personal chronicles of Chinese America. In The Opposite of Fate, Tan has an open platform to defend and protest against those who berate and belittle the integrity of her intentions. A writer of wit and intelligence, it's her clarion voice of pain and admonition that rings most potent, true and tenable.