The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan is a non-fiction biography that shows how her life and writing shaped eachother. She gives details on her mother’s life in China, her parent’s relationship, the death of her brother and father, living in Switzerland as a teen, her first boyfriend, the murder of her best friend, being in a rock-and-roll band with other authors, 9/11, and getting Lyme disease.
One story is finding herself as a topic in the Cliff Notes section of a bookstore. Reading the notes, she was surprised by what her stories were supposed to mean, what the themes were, what she supposedly said about the Chinese-American experience. The Cliff Notes seemed to be describing someone else. Similarly when Tan googles herself and finds all sorts of wild stories that were not true. The Opposite of Fate was a way to put out real information about her life.
How does one remember what happened in order to write about it?
Writing from memory is more about remembering my psychological place in the world at different stages of my life…my memory, then is entirely subjective. And that, I think is the kind of memory that is simultaneously the most unreliable and the most authentic element a writer can infuse into her work.
Tan’s fiction is very easy to read and I was pleased to find that she spoke in the same voice for her non-fiction work. One of Tan’s chapters is “Fate and Faith” with the indication that faith is the opposite of fate. Faith didn’t sit well with me. Is it Luck? Choice? Free Will?
