A Discussion With Amy Tan   Q: Where does your title come from?     Show/Hide Answer     A: In Buddhist countries, you are morally prohibited from killing anything. Yet, some people find loopholes, rationalization, justification, equivocation—and that is evident in any culture and religion and government. In Burma, a fisherman might say he is “saving fish from drowning” as he removes it from the water. It struck me as an apt metaphor for many things in life, both personal and in the larger scheme of things. The world is filled with the need to save people, save the rainforests, save the earth from global warming. When we, the outsiders, are confronted with so many problems—hunger, suppression, civil war, or malaria, for instance—we are thrown into having a moral response. It could be that we simply look away; doing nothing is a moral response. Or we jump in with our shirtsleeves rolled up. And perhaps, in the process, we knock someone over and injure them. So what happens when our good intentions don’t lead to good consequences? What if our actions wind up not saving lives but killing them? What is our moral responsibility then?   Q: This book is something of a departure for you, in that mother-daughter relationships are not at the center of your story, although two of them hover at the edges. Did you make a conscious decision to move toward a different type of subject?     Show/Hide Answer     A: When I finished the last book, it was about six months after both my mother and editor had died. At two in the morning, immediately after I finished the last book, I started writing the outline for this book. I had been thinking about the subject of this book for a while--the disturbing questions about intentions. But up until then I had been writing about mothers and daughters because the beliefs I developed from my life with a difficult mother had occupied most of my thoughts. And I tend to write about the questions that continually haunt me. But my relationship with my mother toward the end of her life was wonderful, and usually writers write about what’s not-so-wonderful.   Q: Also, nearly all of the action takes place in the present rather than the past, unlike several of your previous books. Are you less interested in the past than you once were, or are you just more urgently drawn toward the present?     Show/Hide Answer     A: The story takes place in the present but the past informs it. I’m always interested in both. I’m interested in the influences of the past, the patterns that it imposes on the present, rather than the past as purely sentimental. Sentimentality can creep in, but it’s not the thrust of why I go to the past. There are some subtle references in my new book to the past –the migration of artistic motifs, ideas and religious beliefs, particularly Chinese animist notions that have drifted south into Burma, a very Buddhist country. And there are Christian notions imported by missionaries, and with the animist mix, you wind up with a fairly interesting religion. There is the influence in the political or historical past of one country on another. And of course there’s Bibi’s past as well, which certainly has a major effect on her present state of being and what she narrates and how.   Q: While there are Asian-American and Asian characters in the book, most of the principal characters are not Asian, and some of them are men, which is another big change for you. Did you begin to find dealing with Asian-American characters and with women limiting, or are you just broadening your canvas?     Show/Hide Answer     A: Yeah, I never was a man before! (Laughs). Actually, it had more to do with the nature of the story itself. It wasn’t that I said to myself I should try something new to prove that I can do this or that. My new book just brings into play more elements from my life, my multiple perspectives and interests. And from a writing standpoint, I’ve always wanted to do something like The Canterbury Tales, in which twelve people go on a journey and have their stories to tell. They all end up at an inn, talking to the barkeep, who takes this all in and joins them. Harry Bailley is his name in Chaucer’s story. And in my book, Harry Bailley is the one who stays behind and interprets all the stories.   Q: Was there a particular incident or interest that inspired you to write this novel?     Show/Hide Answer     A: There was no single thing. In the book’s “Note to the Reader,” I describe the inspiration and genesis of the book, but, in reality, that Forward is where the fiction begins. It sets up the story as based on a “true” story dictated by a ghost to a psychic medium. I chose a ghost because I needed a particular kind of narrator who was omniscient but also opinionated and funny and strident and at times a little obnoxious. She tells inappropriate truths. The only way you can get atypical omniscience is with a schizophrenic character or someone who’s dead, and I chose the latter. But the story about finding the writings of someone named Bibi Chen is completely fabricated, as is the story about the lost tourists who made the international news. The real reasons for the book were many: I would see events in the news that would very much disturb me, and I was disturbed by the way the news was being interpreted. I started to see that people’s acceptance of what is true and not true has a lot to do with their assumptions, their existing beliefs. There was a real news story a few years back about twin boys who were leading a group of Karens hiding in the jungle. The tribe believed they were gods who could stop bullets. They probably found proof to support this belief. Well, when we see something on televised news, we generally assume it’s true. But I thought to myself: Anything handed to us as truth is only a version of truth – there’s interpretation there, and obviously it is edited for length, so you can’t possibly get the complete picture. One of the questions I wrestle over in my mind is: What is true in anything we see and read and hear? Is a reality show a reflection of reality? I wanted to play around with that notion of truth in the book.   Q: Why Burma as a setting? Have you traveled there? How did you research the setting?     Show/Hide Answer     A: Burma is a great setting for a novel—beautiful, mysterious, historical, forgotten, transformed, ill, and full of the horrific that is not mentioned in tour brochures. It is troubled and troubling, and that made me uncomfortable, a good place to start a story. I thought a lot about whether to go. A friend of mine said, “How can you go there? They have a terrible government and we should boycott it.” Another writer said: “You have to go there and be a witness.” Someone else said, “You can go just for the culture. Culture isn’t political.” And some say you have to engage with countries on the Needs to Improve list. I read a lot of articles on constructive engagement, economic peer pressure, some of them by oil company lobbyists. In the end, I had to ask myself, is it my intention to help the people there, or to witness their plight, or to understand the complexity of the problem, or to simply have a good time seeing shrines, Buddhist art or antique shops? Which? All? What was my decision based on? That then was my moral response, knowing multiple sides to a moral dilemma, finding ambiguity, then having to choose and rationalize my choice. Part of the reason was to write a novel based there. And the other… Well, I had been asked once to go to Burma on behalf of a human rights group. They asked if I was willing to go there and criticize the government in public. I’ve been asked to do the same in China. Now I do think that many of the human rights organizations are essential and do good work, and they do save the lives of real people, many of them writers. But I’ve also disagreed with certain human rights organizations and their media attempts to shame a government. Each country is different. I’m not sure it has a real impact on improving people’s lives; it may even prove detrimental. Yet the groups seem well-intentioned. So I’ve had to think, how does anyone know if their good intentions will lead to good? If we don’t know for certain, should we make contingency plans for actions that backfire? Are intentions contaminated by self-interest? So I went to Burma for about a week, and I took copious notes of what I saw and what I felt. With each city I imagined what might take place there. But I told no one what I was doing. Actually, let me revise what I just said. According to the Forward in the book, I did not go to Burma, most certainly not, and that’s because writers are not allowed in Burma. Horrors, we might write about the place.   Q: Romances, both successful and failed, play a major role in this story. In fact, there’s something reminiscent of a Shakespearean comedy like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” here, where amorous couples are let loose in an idyllic forest and left to sort themselves out. Is this somewhat new fictional territory for you?     Show/Hide Answer     A: I took fictional devices from a number of genres. There are twelve travelers, and twelve or more genres here—murder mystery, romance, picaresque, comic novel, magical realism, fable, myth, police detective, political farce, and so forth. In romances, there are misunderstandings and missed connections, but there’s consummation at the end. In any romance, that’s the formula, sometimes minus the comedy, but always with the consummation. Another genre is mystery – the reader doesn’t know how Bibi died, which is gruesomely described, leaving you with strong hints of murder and conflicting details that must be solved by the end. There’s a travelogue aspect of being in an exotic country and getting insider tips. There is fiction masquerading as a guide to art and culture and wildlife. People love to take armchair journeys to interesting, exotic places and learn about their inner workings. I do. There’s the adventure tale – twelve tourists are lost in the jungle with perils galore. There’s myth, a real one, in fact, among some of the Karen tribe. It’s that of the White Younger Brother, in which a besieged people expect a white savior to restore their power. There’s the scatological humor that teenagers and grown men find so funny. I took all these genres and made it a literary puzzle for myself, which kept me entertained and put my brain into all kinds of twists. I figured if I enjoyed it, others might as well.   Q: Although this is not a political novel as such, there is a strong political dimension to it. One of your main themes is the huge cultural and economic and political chasm that exists between the Americans and the Burmese. Why did you want to focus on this kind of situation right now? Did you feel some sort of responsibility as a novelist or as a human being to address it? Does it reflect a wider dynamic in the world at present?     Show/Hide Answer     A: It’s not completely a political novel, but whenever you’re talking about a situation in the world like the one in Burma, you traipse into what is political. In fiction, hopefully it is not too one-sided or polemical. I like things that are myriad-sided and mutating. I was reading stories about Burma over the years, and it looked like things were getting better. Political prisoners would be released, and reforms would be announced, Aung San Suu Kyi would be freed from house arrest, but then it would all be yanked back very quickly when the world was no longer looking. But the strategy worked, because the temporary improvements would all be reported in the news and people outside ended up feeling Burma was doing better. That’s what I thought, as did friends I asked. Then I would read more. By the way, I use the traditional name Burma, because it’s my political choice. I’m saying that this military regime that took over when it lost the 1990 election and renamed the country Myanmar is not the legitimate government. In the novel, however, I use both names. The story still contains ambivalence. I started this book in 2001, before 9/11 and the Iraq War. And since then, world perception of the U.S. has flip-flopped. Those in other countries question our intentions, whether they really will do good and if they are self-serving. And as our country grew more divided, I saw that many people adhered to one side or the other, with very little in the middle as common ground. How could our perceptions of truth be so different? Are we seeing only to confirm what we already believe?   Q: It may strike some people as odd to juxtapose light social and romantic comedy with the grim situation of the Burmese. Why did you feel these two aspects of the novel would work well together?     Show/Hide Answer     A: Humor and fiction are among the most potent ways to address serious problems and keep people’s attention on it. I realize that people read for entertainment and pleasure. That’s part of why I read. And if you present a book about obviously unhappy and irresolvable situations, many readers are going to turn off. The character Bibi confesses she much prefers the colonial stories of romanticism, the happy days under the parasol, throwbacks to a happier time, even if they are a distortion of the truth. She goes on to say that the books that are about Burma today are too grim. They start off with the horror, in the middle there’s another facet to the horror, and at the end there’s the complexity of horror. And you feel horrible after reading them. You might feel morally good that you took the time to read them and you’re disturbed, but then you don’t know what to do. You are helpless to help. Those books don’t move you to a spiritual place that’s uplifting and less stifling. Secretly, you set those books aside and don’t finish reading them. Some of Bibi’s sentiments were mine. I had to force myself to read those books. I knew I should read them. But that’s why I like the comic novel or fiction that transports me to another world. It’s subversive. It seduces me into reading about serious subjects. Comic novels over time have actually been very successful at pointing out moral, social, and political ills. Jane Austen was a master at jabbing at the absurdities and oppression of the class system. Comedy is really one of most expedient ways to get people to understand nasty issues.   Q: The power of the media, especially 24/7 television news and reality shows – and the ever-blurring line between them – is another major theme in your novel. Television is instrumental in determining the fate of both the tourists and the Burmese. Do you get the feeling that the global power of television is just transforming and swallowing up every other kind of reality, so that even serious novelists like yourself are forced to confront it at every turn?     Show/Hide Answer     A: Absolutely. Certain people have questioned whether fiction still has importance and relevance among readers. It’s needed more than ever. To me, imagination is the closest thing we have to compassion. To have compassion you have to be able to imagine the lives of others, including people who are suffering, and people whose lives are affected by us. Fiction has a huge role in presenting the truth of anything – not the facts, but the feelings, what you feel, what others feel, what your moral position is, your version of truth. About six years ago, I heard a news network claim that the news shapes what happens. It’s the notion that putting a spotlight on something gets us involved. I’ve thought that as well–if only this problem were covered by the news, the problem would be fixed. Do we depend more and more on this kind of alteration, the reality makeovers? Is that good? I wanted to examine my personal response to this, what I really believe about the influence of the media. I wanted to ask questions and pose all the different ways in which this was both good and bad. In the novel, the good part is that the media helps the travelers get saved. The bad part is that Harry is in collusion with the junta and more tourists come to visit a country that is supposed to be boycotted. Let me give a firsthand example of the media shaping the news, one that particularly affected me. Some years back, a British television documentary called “The Dying Room” presented secret footage on orphanages. It depicted babies who were dying. The conclusion was that girls were being systematically killed in Chinese orphanages. It got a lot of attention in the news, much outrage from the public. In reaction, the Chinese government got very angry, closed the orphanages to outsiders, stopped accepting money for cleft palate surgeries, and stopped foreign adoptions for about a year. Did the documentary help those other babies? Nobody could get in to check. A lot of hopeful American parents were in anguish, and a lot of babies did not get adopted. Cleft palate and heart surgeries did not occur. Some of those babies most certainly died as a result of that. Was there another way to improve the situation of those children? Perhaps. I would have liked to see a report on that. Sometimes direct criticism of a government is not the best way to improve matters. Who does grandstanding serve? I would rather think about the impact that I have on a real person right now rather than way in the future with idealism as the goal. That’s just me, but perhaps we need the balance of many people who see it all different ways.   Q: You’ve said that this is a story about morality and intention. As one of your characters puts it, “You can’t have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences?” Can you talk about that?     Show/Hide Answer     A: This is not about the kind of morality where I’m shaking my finger and saying you’re bad for what you’re doing or not doing. It’s really about the questions I’ve asked myself, about many things going on in the world and not just in Burma. And if I am asking these questions, maybe others are as well. There are no easy questions to things that are seemingly irresolvable. When I begin a novel, I don’t know where it will take me. I can’t start with an answer, a pre-made conclusion that I then drive into place with the hammer of my words. On a day-to-day level, consider how we are reacting to people suffering in New Orleans. We watch this reality on TV. I know people who cry every time they turn on the television and see a victim crying. They feel they can’t do enough or give enough. I’ve heard of others who don’t watch or read the news, because they would rather not get disturbed and ruin their concentration to work at hand. There are others who are holding benefits, getting others involved. Some have given five dollars because that’s what they can afford. Some give five thousand, because that’s what they can afford. Some go to work at disaster relief centers. So there’s a huge range of reactions. Now here is just one question related to that: If I feel nothing and do nothing is that better than feeling sad and then doing nothing? Is a deeply, deeply empathizing person better than a rich person giving a lot of money? There’s no answer to this. It’s a question that generates more questions.   Q: A remarkable woman named Bibi Chen, a recently deceased antiques dealer and patron of the arts, is the narrator and guiding spirit – literally – of this novel. Is she based on anyone you know, or is she entirely a product of your imagination?     Show/Hide Answer     A: Well, her feisty voice is like my mother’s. She’s disarming in what she says that is piquant, quirky, often inappropriate, and yet honest. But no, otherwise, Bibi has no counterpart in real life. In the story, she’s a philanthropist, socialite, and antiques gallery owner. She liked to give money to organizations that give parties. She enjoyed seeing her name in the social columns of the papers. She wanted to be listed in the programs of ritzy benefits, and she wanted to get credit. She’s upset, in the afterlife, that she’s getting only a wing of a museum named after her and not the whole thing. For me, the notion of credit fits in with the question of intentions. Is it wrong to want credit? Is it necessary to get credit?   Q: There are two main mysteries in your novel – what will happen to the vanished tourists, and how Bibi Chen died. In both cases, the outcomes could have been quite ghastly, but ultimately they aren’t. Were you ever tempted to make things turn out badly for Bibi and the tourists, to create a very dark ending?     Show/Hide Answer     A: No, never. It started as a comic novel, it always was going to be a comic novel. I can’t have the main characters die in a comedy unless they go to a funny place in the afterlife. Comedy has a contract with those who are pulled into it. It can take them out on a limb, but you can’t let it break and take everyone else down with it screaming their heads off as they meet an unexpected and very unpleasant demise.   Q: Of course, things do end very differently for the Burmese, who are not nearly as fortunate as the Americans. The Americans’ experience with the Burmese actually enriches their lives and changes them for the better, whereas the lives of the Burmese get worse as a result of their contact with the Americans. Did you feel guilty about having things turn out this way, or did you feel that any other ending would have rung false?     Show/Hide Answer     A: The Americans more or less have the requisite happy endings, but the questions remain. Some are changed and some are not changed by their experience. Some have learned things, become wiser people or more questioning about life. Others haven’t. The tourists served their fictional purpose—they went on a journey, got roughed up, and went back to their lives mostly intact. Now we know what happened to these people. With the Karen people, well, we don’t know precisely what happened. We are on the outside. It may very well be that they died or are in hiding. The only thing that is certain is that whatever happened, they all stuck together. I wanted to end with that commitment, with a sense that it was more important to stay together than life itself. And because of that, we want to know what happened to people who believed that.   Q: Toward the conclusion of the novel, Bibi reflects on the nature of endings, which in a sense are never truly final. Yet of course a novel must end. How do you reconcile the existential and spiritual reality of endings with the demands of art?     Show/Hide Answer     A: We leave the tourists at some logical point on the endless loop. They’ve gone home, returned to their lives, yet you also sense that their lives have become more complicated and there’s more that will happen, as with real life. As a writer, I know that the expectations a reader has must be fulfilled. The loose ends have to be addressed, although not neatly and falsely tied into a perfect bundle. Hopefully, the characters have more dimensionality by the end. They are imperfect, yet they are lovable. But some things in a novel may remain unanswered and are disturbing. Good that does no good is a disturbing notion. But what is a novel for if not to be provocative? Some stories exist to delve into the questions that we don’t want to ask.   Q: What do you hope readers take away from this novel?     Show/Hide Answer     A: That they had a good time reading it, meaning they enjoyed it and thought it was worth the money they paid and the time they spent with it. And that they left it wanting to ask the same questions in their own lives about truth and intentions, about how truth affects intentions, and about where they find truth, individual and universal, and why it’s important to have both.