Ms Tan,you've referred to your new novel as your eighth book. That's because it took me six or seven attempts at a second novel before I started and completed this one. *Why do you think you had so many false starts? I would say that my reasons were wrong:I was trying to prove that I wasn't just a mother-daughter storyteller,or I was trying to prove that I didn't just have to write about things that were strictly Chinese or Chinese-American.Those were never the right reasons for writing those early stories.And I could never come up with other,better reasons for continuing them. *What kept you going on this book? This book was different because it was based on my mother's real life.The reason for writing it became more personal and emotional.After The Joy Luck Club came out,my mother was always explaining to people that she wasn't any of the mothers in that book.And at one point she said to me,"Next book tells my true story."And then she started telling me things I never knew before.She also told me many,many stories,because my mother doesn't generalize.The book really grew out of that. *Have you ever visited China? Yes.I've been there twice:about three years ago and then again last November,both times with my mother and my husband. *Was it difficult to capture the Chinese-American dialect without sounding like a parody ? No,because it's the language I've heard all my life from my mother.She speaks English as it's direct translation from Chinese.But it's more than that:Her language also has more imagery than English. *Can you think of an example? Somebody might say to me,"Don't work so hard.You'll kill yourself."My mother will say to me,"Why do you press all your brains out on this page for someone else?"So it's very vivid.That's the way she talks. *Have many readers told you that the Chinese mother in your book reminded them of the typical Jewish mother? Many people have told me that.I think the mother-daughter relationship is very intense in both cases.Culturally there is an acceptance that mothers have the power to tell their children,especially their daughters,how to conduct their lives--not simply up until the time they are 18,but for the rest of their lives.However,when children grow up in a different culture from their parents',they tend to keep more secrets from their parents.The children think,"They just wouldn't understand that I had to do this."And that can really create a gap,and it can grow as the number of secrets grows. Which question is NOT answered in the interview?
How does she think of her mother's language? How many books does she plan to write? When did she visit China? How is generation gap created?