Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir

Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir
Amy Tan

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 I.Q. 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 candour and characteristic humour, 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.

Copyright (#ulink_2257f1ba-207d-5630-9c25-ede6e7ef9def)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

First published in the United States by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, in 2017

Copyright © 2017 by Amy Tan

Cover illustration by Michelle Thompson. Images by kind permission of the author.

‘One of the Butterflies’ by W. S. Merwin taken from The Shadow of Sirius (Bloodaxe Books, 2008) and reproduced by permission of Bloodaxe Books.

www.bloodaxebooks.com (http://www.bloodaxebooks.com)

‘The Breaker of Combs’ was first published in Zyzzyva, October 2016.

‘The Unfurling of Leaves’ was first published in Allure magazine, November 2005, titled as ‘A Natural Woman.’

Amy Tan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780007585571

Ebook Edition © November 2018 ISBN: 9780007585564

Version: 2018-09-25

Dedication (#ulink_6951831e-ece1-5751-8a2a-b2b3a10748fe)

For Daniel Halpern,

suddenly and finally,

our book.

Slipstream

[From the journal]

2012

You think you are oceans apart when it is really only a slipstream that you fell into by accident or inattention.

CONTENTS

Cover (#u55cf0bec-7f1c-5368-b521-bd66766185a5)

Title Page (#u23cfcc38-b8f1-595a-afbc-c5a6ab408d5f)

Copyright (#u2f649520-e7f2-5564-934f-8846c6fedf3b)

Dedication (#ua5dd5705-6d0f-56c8-889a-48bd55d64a97)

Introduction – Where the Past Begins

PROLOGUE – The Breaker of Combs

I. IMAGINATION

CHAPTER ONE – A Leaky Imagination

CHAPTER TWO – Music as Muse

Quirk – Souvenir from a Dream

CHAPTER THREE – Hidden Genius

Interlude – Reorientation: Homer, Alaska

II. MEMORY IN EMOTION

CHAPTER FOUR – Genuine Emotions

CHAPTER FIVE – The Feeling of What It Felt Like When It Happened

Quirk – A Mere Mortal at Age Twenty-Five

Quirk – A Mere Mortal at Age Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Quirk – How to Change Fate: Step 1

III. RETRIEVING THE PAST