Amy Tan

My mother left behind three daughters when she went to America and started a new life. I certainly felt abandoned when my father died of a brain tumour; I felt he had abandoned me to this terrible, volatile mother and I had no protection. ”

God, life changes faster than you think. ”

I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life. ”

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye. ”

My grandmother. She's someone I never met, and I would've loved to have met her. She's been a huge influence on our entire family, not just me. She is a mystery. It's not clear exactly what about her is truth and myth. ”

Chinese artists have been subversive over thousands of years, taking what they think of the government and embedding it in their art. There might be censorship of not going as far as they might. ”

I read academic books on courtesan culture at the turn-of-the century in Shanghai such as Gail Hershatter's 'The Gender of Memory'. The diaries were mostly in the form of letters from courtesans to a lover who had disappeared or taken their savings. ”

At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture. ”

I went to an exhibition at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum about Shanghai, about how courtesans had been influential in bringing western culture to Shanghai. I bought a book and in it saw this striking group of women in a photograph called 'The Ten Beauties of Shanghai'. ”

I am an American, steeped in American values. But I know on an emotional level what it means to be of the Chinese culture. ”