FROM NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR AMY TAN, A MEMOIR ON HER LIFE
AS A WRITER, HER CHILDHOOD, AND THE SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
FICTION AND EMOTIONAL MEMORY
In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club
and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan is at her most intimate in
revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary
fiction. By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood,
confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to
and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both
unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer. Through
spontaneous storytelling, she shows how a fluid fictional state of mind
unleashed near-forgotten memories that became the emotional nucleus of
her novels.
Tan explores shocking truths uncovered by family memorabilia--the real
reason behind an IQ test she took at age six, why her parents lied about
their education, mysteries surrounding her maternal grandmother--and,
for the first time publicly, writes about her complex relationship with
her father, who died when she was fifteen. Supplied with candor and
characteristic humor, Where the Past Begins takes readers into the
idiosyncratic workings of her writer's mind, a journey that explores
memory, imagination, and truth, with fiction serving as both her
divining rod and link to meaning.
